Here’s a fellow – Graham Waldon – shares with many of us the CD dilemma. Check out his blog for some fun, funny and even a few really helpful suggestions on how to handle the overflow. They include:
Last post we looked at goal statements and how they meet SMART criteria. Now let’s keep track of the results.
The first rule is to keep things simple. Start with the number of goals. Too many and you will spend all your time managing them and no time actually working on them. Too few and you will fail to reach you objectives. The number and complexity will depend on your business/department/project. There is no magic number. If you have none, try starting with the Shakespearean magic number of 3.
Second rule is to work backwards. If you want 70 new active clients by December 31, 2008, how many do you need each month/week/day to meet that goal. Tracking daily for this goal is probably too small a time frame and will produce data that takes time to process for very little return. Tracking weekly on this goal will give you information before the end of the month on whether or not any progress is being made. Tracking monthly may leave you fretting after month 3 that the goal is not being met and 25% of the year is up – the cycle time from identification to correction to results may be too long to permit timely correction when necessary
Thirdly, ensure that progress feedback gets to the people trying to meet the goal. If your sales staff are reporting weekly the number of new active clients, publish the aggregate data to all the staff each week. Meanwhile, you have an opportunity for intervention with any individual sales staff who is not meeting targets. At the same time, celebrate monthly accomplishments!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Now six weeks into the calendar year is a good time to review the progress you have made on your strategic goals. Having established the goals, you will need to ensure tracking, monitoring and evaluating systems are in place to manage your progress.
We will start by reviewing the goal statements themselves. Are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited (otherwise known as SMART goals)? If you have established an annual goal, it is time limited by the end of the year in question, say December 31 or whichever year end you have chosen for your review.
To be specific, your goals must state exactly what you wish to accomplish and, to be measurable, in quantifiable terms.
For example:
We will increase our active client roster.
Versus:
We will increase our active client roster by 50% to a total of 210 active clients, by December 31, 2008.
On December 31, you will either have 210 active clients or you won’t. Your degree of success will be relatively easy to identify.
The criterion of attainable refers to the ability of anyone to reach the goal given the same circumstances under which you are working. If it takes a month’s time on average for each sales person to develop each new lead to an active client, and you have 2 sales staff, assuming they have 100% conversion from leads to active clients, you could only reach 21 new clients by year’s end. The example I gave required 70 new clients.
By comparison, the realistic criterion refers to the likelihood that the goal will be attained under the same circumstances. If you have 5 sales staff regularly securing 1 new active client each month, after 12 months, you will have 60 new active clients. Can that same staff increase their conversion rate to achieve the required 70 new active clients by year’s end?
OK. You have reviewed your goals and you are satisfied that they meet the SMART criteria. Next post we will look at tracking your progress.
For many people, the traditional children’s gifts or tokens at Valentine’s Day are plush toys and chocolate. This year, I was particularly challenged as my 13 year old daughter has given up chocolate for Lent. We no longer accumulate plush toys as she has purged her collection down to her few very favourites. My solution is to bake a (vanilla) cake for the family and yes, it will be pink or red(ish).
Do you have suggestions to offer the readership? What do other people use as clutter free, candy free gifts or tokens to the kids?
Add you comments below and let us know your solutions.
Q and A: Paper
This is the first of what will become a regular feature on the Wellrich Blog: a Question and Answer column. I often receive questions from clients. Many of the questions are very similar. I will post here some of the more common, interesting or helpful for your benefit. If you have questions you would like answered, send them to me at wellrichorganizers@rogers.com.
Q: I can’t keep track of all of the paper that comes into the house- mail, school papers, etc. If I try to put things away I forget about them and miss things, and if I leave them out I can’t find anything. What do you suggest? I currently have stacks of paper in various places, things on my bulletin board, and the really important things stuck into my planner. Cherri, Toronto
A: “How do I handle the paper?” is the most common question most professional organizers receive from their organizing clients.
Step 1 – The first step to correcting the solution is to get all the paper in one place so that it can be weeded out. Schools are notorious for sending second and third copies of forms to be signed if they haven’t shown up by the due date. Pull is all together in one big pile and let’s go.
Step 2 – Go through and throw out (recycle) all the duplicates, envelopes and junk mail. What you have left is the material that you really need to address.
Step 3 – Set up a date sensitive/hot file type folder for handling birthday invitaitions, Kiwanis dates, doctors appointments or anything else that stale dates. This can be as simple as (my favourite) an alligator hook holding the date sorted papers hung on a hook in the kitchen, or as complicated as a 31 day accordion file used as a bring forward file.
Step 4 – Set up a reference material holder. This could be (my favourite) an accordion file labeled by subject (church, teacher, ballet studio, music teacher) or a binder with dividers using the same titles. File the paper related to these subjects as reference for when you need it. If it doesn’t contain reference, toss it.
Step 5 – Set up a filing system for day to day items such as statements that you still receive in hard copy. Get into the habit of keeping only the minimum required e.g. one year of statements, latest bill, total year to date etc.
Step 6 – Set up a mail station with a separate slot for every member of your family. This could be as simple as a cereal box cut like a paper tray (get the kids to decorate their own), plastic stacking paper trays, wall hanging shoe holders or anything else you can imagine. Go vertical! Label each members slot and make sure that when the mail comes in, it gets sorted. This is a good “chore” for a grade 3 student.
Step 7 – Give your kids a folder – plastic, 2 pocket, which they can choose the colour and decorate. Have them use this folder for everything that comes home for you. They bring it home and put it in your mail slot. You take out the contents, sign the forms and put it back in their slot. They check the slot each morning before school.
It will take a while for your family to buy into all of this but persevere. They will catch on and the kids will love not being nagged at school for the forms which used to be always late. Kids also like having their own mail slot. It makes them feel important and on an equal footing to older siblings/parents at least in this one department.
As the first one-twelth of the year comes to a close, have you planned your results for the year yet?
What would you like to accomplish by the end of 2008?
What would you like to be remembered for?
What would you like to stop doing?
What will you do more of, how much, when and with whom.
Enjoy preparing this next chapter of your accomplishments.
As the first one-twelth of the year comes to a close, have you planned your results for the year yet?
What would you like to accomplish by the end of 2008?
What would you like to be remembered for?
What would you like to stop doing?
What will you do more of, how much and when.
Enjoy, preparing this next chapter of your accomplishments.
Can you remember where the holiday decorations are?
Do you have to search for them everytime you want to use them?
Are all your Christmas decorations stored in the same room?
Are they stored in the house or in the garage?
If they are stored in the garage, are they in waterproof boxes or bags?
Are they stored in containers?
Can you easily identify the containers from the other storage boxes/containers you store in the same place – like a red lid for example?
Are the containers labeled?
Are similar items stored together i.e. are the Christmas tree decorations together in one /boxcontainer?
Are the linens stored in dust proof containers or will you have to wash them again before you can use them?
Are the heavy containers stored low so that they can’t fall on you when you take them off a top shelf?
Next to “what do I do with all the paper?” the question “what do I do with my teenager?” is one of the most frequent questions I am asked as a professional organizer. When I dig deeper for information, most of you are concerned about 1) their bedroom which often looks like a cyclone went through and 2) their school desk/locker which looks like the cyclone dumped everything there.
Why are the teenagers so messy? Why are they so disorganized? What am I, as a parent, going to do about it?
Great questions.
Teenagers have a lot of “stuff” going on in their minds, which means they may be too distracted and preoccupied to worry about the “stuff” on the floor of their room. Keeping track of the relationship with and between friends, who is wearing what, who is talking to whom – or not – is a lot for a preteen and teenager to be thinking about. When you consider how quickly this social scene can change when you are between the ages of 12 and 19, especially the 12 to 14 year olds, their brains are on fast forward just keeping up with social dynamics.
Now add issues around school work and assignments, part time jobs and any other sports or activities they might be engaged in. We aren’t done yet; now add in the physical growth challenges like how to use arms and legs that grew (apparently) overnight, brains that are just plain tired from growing. Finally, to top it all off, the oversupply of (feels like new) hormones with attached emotional ups and downs, and – well – whether or not the laundry is in the hamper pales in significance by comparison. Can you blame them?
There is hope. The frontal lobe development occurs in the teenage years and with it the executive control that is housed there.
What can you do? Children tend to learn their organization skills from their parents. If you send out the message from your own state of organization (what does your desk look like?) that organization is not a priority, they will follow your step. Allowing them to leave the laundry on the floor until it stands itself up in the corner is sending the message that dirty laundry on the floor is ok.
We all know as parents – in case you wondered, yes, I have a teenage daughter – that we have to pick our battles. Organization is no different. I will leave you with this thought and homework: What message are you sending to your teenager about organization? Does everything have to be perfect? Is mess and disorganization ok as long as no one sees it? Is there a level of organization that is required, or desired, in order to meet our obligations at whatever stage of life we are in?
Think about it.
Are all your company policies in one room?
Are they all on one server?
Are they in one file cabinet/binder or e-folder?
Are they in one file?
Are they dated?
Are they current?
Do they share a similar format?
Do the employees know they exist?
Are thy accessible to all employees for reference?
Would anyone find them in a reasonable period of time?
Do they use them?
Could your employees direct a new employee to them for reference?
Does your company have an annual review date established for each policy?
Did you review them on/near that date?
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