Category: Tool Kit

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Four ways to make your job as a manager more enjoyable

Step Back from the Immediate Tasks.

Take some time to think and reflect – objectively identify the high-payoff activities.  These activities should be judged based on the end result – not on the action itself.  Writing emails is often a low-payoff activity, but when the email helps everyone on the team to focus on one goal, it is undoubtedly a high payoff. Write it deliberately…don’t just produce a “stream of consciousness” that blurs the message.

Delegate, delegate, delegate. 

The best leaders are undoubtedly the best delegators  – make sure the jobs you give people a whole and meaningful and that you do give them the jobs.  Don’t get them to report unless they are in trouble.  Develop the self-confidence to let them do their jobs. Delegating is a development tool. Delegating is a way to distribute the workload. Delegating is a way to help the organisation work on essential tasks. Delegation should not add to your workload, so delegate…and forget until the results roll in.  You’ve cleared the decks to do other things.

Plan AND SCHEDULE daily.

Go beyond a simple “TO-DO List” or a list of priorities and also schedule your activities. Schedule time to complete a slice of an important, long-term exercise.  Don’t plan to do the not urgent, or the urgent but not important and hope you will get time to do what is critical to getting results.  Schedule first the high-pay-off activities, and fit the rest around those.  Do everything in their power to stick to the schedule.

Get Results.

Help the entire team focus on the essential issues.  Indicate that actions are judged on results, not progress reports. Outputs lead to outcomes – a report is seldom an outcome!!  Make sure you and the team are clear on the outcomes wanted and the outputs needed to get there.

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Managing expectations – A managers goal is….

  • to establish, explain and assess reasonable goals.
  • to state goals positively.
  • to ensure goals are realistic, achievable and have some stretch to them.  (Achievement builds confidence.) Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.
  • to negotiate all goals; win commitment.
  • to write down goals; convert dreams to tangible targets.
  • to align goals with the corporate mission.  (Requires regular review to prevent goal conflicts.)
  • to FOCUS time and effort on the important but not urgent issues that have long-term impact; the issues which make the big difference.
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Working out loud…..opportunities for an introvert in social media? (Nowhere to hide in the COVID induced online work spaces)

My present enthusiasms include doing (again, it is simply that good) the Harold Jarche course on personal knowledge management, PKM in 40 days , and reconnecting the concept of working out loud.

This is challenging, as the introvert in me screams for this process to be internalised, and screams for a completing of the work before it is shared.  Small talk stresses me out, so the thought of working out load is scary.  It’s easier for me to talk about the complete picture, not the work in progress.  Working with people and in groups drains the energy from me.  I sense a loss of control over my thoughts…I am just not good at thinking out load. And this is really challenging in the digitally-connected, online work environment that COVID-19 has imposed on us – you can’t really take time out and hope to keep up – you either engage in every moment or you lose the sense of things (and you don’t know who is actually looking at you!) The introvert in me didn’t anticipate that.

So, working out loud in the social media might offer some great opportunities…I can put my ideas out in the hope that others can help improve them without…well, without having to be social.  Really? Well, it is really a different way to been social than the (team meeting, or face-to-face, or the social gathering) online meetings.

With social media, I can control the level of interaction and the pace of engagement.  I can create the space I need to recharge the batteries.

I guess I can still be social…work out load…and not raise my anxiety too much. Thus create some time and space for ideas to develop.

This will be (fun) (interesting) (scary) …..sort of like throwing caution to the wind….being vulnerable….learning….

Learning? ……… Acceptable risk

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For greater effect – communicate your strategy in 6 sentences

Who says your strategy needs to be heavily documented?  Try doing  it in 6 sentences for greater effect.

Here is a little gem I recently rediscovered and one of the many notebooks that are a key part of my reflective and reflexive practice. The source is Jay Conrad Levinson, and my notes say it comes from something he wrote in in Entrepreneur, that was then quoted in Communication Briefings,  Volume 14 number 2, page four, December 1994 

I have tried to find the original source, but it appears not to be anywhere on the Internet, so I suspect it was from a print newsletter.  Given that it was 1994 that is not surprising.  Levinson was known as a guru of Guerrilla Marketing – and his work can be found here: https://strategiesforinfluence.com/jay-conrad-levinson-guerrilla-marketing/

The gem I rediscovered is about bringing clarity, precision, conciseness and parsimony to your stated strategies.  Levinson used an example from advertising to explain this.

To make sure your advertising as a clear purpose, state your strategy in six sentences.

  • Prime purpose. “The purpose of rainbow tours ads is to get people to call and write for a free video brochure.”
  • Prime benefit. “We will stress the unique and exciting places our customers can visit.”
  • Secondary benefits. “We will also stress the convenience and economy of our tours and the skill of our tour guides.”
  • Target audience. “We will aim our ads at adventurous male and female singles and couples, 21 to 34, who can afford our tours.”
  • Audience reaction. “We expect our audience to call or write to request our video brochure.”
  • Company personality. “Our ads will reflect our innovation, excitement, conscientiousness – and our warm, caring attitude toward all customers.” 

I will own up to not being guilty of actually having followed these rules since 1994. I lost the idea in my notebook. And, continuing with the honesty, when I look back over the last 25 years I have probably been guilty of a common organisational sin – that I’ve been over-planned and under-delivered.

A great deal of thought needs to go into your strategy if you are to capture it in 6 sentences. It’s not an easy task, and certainly not as easy as writing the long, verbose omnibuses that often masquerade as a strategy. It requires a depth of understanding that can be challenging, particularly in our seemingly time poor work environments.

But I can’t help think of how much more effective I might have been if I had used a 6-sentence strategy approach to my work?