To review development of your goals click here.
To review measurement of your goals click here.
Archive for Leadership – Page 2
You recognize its time to increase organization in your business. You’ve been working diligently to increase your personal organization. As the paper clears and the dust settles, you realize your staff are also working in a cluttered, ineffective environment. It’s time to change the culture in the office from “No one really cares since these aren’t public offices” to “We are proud of the professional environment in which we work“. These strategies will help.
1. Set the Standard Yourself
As head of the organization, directorate or department, your leadership sets the tone. If your office is a pile of disorganized papers, you give your staff the impression you don’t care what the place looks like. Why should they? I know, I know. You can find anything you want in the office right? Are you sure? How long will it take you? And if you don’t show up tomorrow is that the way you want your leadership role remembered? To increase organization in your business requires increased organization for yourself. Get help if you need it and struggle to manage the space, time or stuff.
2. Walk the Talk
Start talking about professional presentation and image at meetings. Add it to performance appraisals to make staff accountable. In order to increase organization in your business, you will have to set the standard across your business practices. The top of your desk is only one place. Staying on time for, during and at meetings speaks volumes about how your expect your staff to perform.
3. Make it easy
Ensure that every staff member has immediate access to a blue box for recycling; right beside their desk in place of a garbage can wouldn’t be tool close.
4. Give staff the Tools
Ensure that every staff has the tools they need to be organized in their work space. Do they have reasonable access to appropriate filing space? Do they have a desk that works? Is there a book shelf or alternative for holding company policy manuals or obligatory preventative maintenance reports? If you aren’t sure what is missing or why an employee is so disorganized, consider having a professional organizer conduct an assessment of the work space in question. There may be more complex organizational issues that the employee is struggling with.
5. Make Organizing a Habit
Schedule a semi-annual clear out day. The rules for the time are simple. Everyone participates in a clear out of their work space on this day. No other meetings or activities are booked. Order lunch for the gang. To increase organization in your business requires routine and practice.
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.
Focus – with a camera? A noun or a verb? And what makes me think it has anything to do with business anyway? Ever try creating something without it?
Probably the single biggest reason employees fail to reach their goals and business fail to succeed is lack of focus. Do you have a mission? Do you know where you are going? Do you know what it will look like when you get there? Do you have a road map? Have you shared the map with anyone else? Have you shared it with everyone else?
If you or your employees are not focused on the goals of the company, they are messing around with what I call corporate clutter; All the stuff that gets in the way of your business, project, division, board of directors or _____________ succeeding (you fill in the blank). It is no different than in your home where clutter takes time, energy and money to manage, and manage around. If your day is cluttered with unnessary and unfocused activity, you are messing with clutter and wasting energy that would otherwise help your business succeed.
Focus: think about it.
This blog is the result of turning dreaming into action. Many years ago, I had the privilege of reporting to a man who, when he learned of my ambition to someday pursue a PhD in the study of leadership, motivation and education, responded that leadership is something we do, not something we study. My path since that moment has taken an interesting turn. The journey has included formation of my company, Wellrich Organizers, almost three years ago and a sojourn through more academia as I pursue certification in chronic disorganization with the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. A focusing of the education, experience and knowledge gained thus far, professional organizing has proven to be the melding of three knowledge arenas which have long held my interest, study and passion namely education, management and psychology. So here goes….I invite you to join me.
