Time Management is Easy

Like a lot of things in management and leadership, there are people who seem to have a vested interest in making time management complicated.  I know of colleagues who have spent between US$1,000 and US$2,000 on time management courses and systems that have been so complex that they were not able to sustain them for more than a few months. 

Keep it simple!

The first principle of time management is keeping it simple!  And the second principle is making it fit your own ways of working, your own personality. 

There are only five things you need for a good time management system.

1. An action list (to-do list)
2.  A diary
3.  Less than half-an-hour per working day
4.  An understanding of the difference between important and urgent
5. A little bit of stickability

 This is what you do

Develop a list of tasks and, during the course of each day, mark off tasks as they get done, and add new tasks as they come up.  Once a day spend twenty to thirty minutes sorting out the priorities for the next 24 hour period. 

In the diary, you put all the appointments, fixed points and unchangeable deadlines.  Update it as new events come up.  And oh; you must remember to look at it every day! 

That’s it.  That is all that is required for good time management. 

Put your personal stamp on your time management

Now, from these basic elements you can personalise it and make it increasingly sophisticated – or not.

For example you might want to consider . . .

• Do I have my action list and/or diary on-line, on-screen or on paper?
• Do I prioritise tasks under titles like today, tomorrow, this week, this month, etc., or do I simply number them 1 to (say) 43?
• Do I tick (P) or cross out my completed tasks?
• Do I colour code the tasks by importance and urgency?
• Do I re-arrange the order each day according the order in which I plan to do the tasks?
•  How much time should I factor in for interruptions and other unexpected events?
• If I have multiple copies of my diary and/or action list how do I ensure up-to-date syncing?
• What fun elements and emotional rewards am I going to introduce, such as giving myself a smiley, a tick (P), or even a coffee break or snack when I complete a task?

Working out the answers to these questions that best suit you will mean that you are more likely to consistently stick with your time management system in the long term. 

 

Importance and urgency 

Urgent tasks are those that scream at us from the page, “Do this task now!”, and “The deadline is fast approaching!”  Often they are tasks that will have real or imagined consequences if they are late.  But, they are not always the most important. 

Important tasks are those that are aligned to your strategic goals, the direction of where you want to go, the tasks that will make a difference to your ministry, that will change lives.  They are the high priority tasks.  Nevertheless, these tasks often remain quiet and unobtrusive.   

So putting the rubbish out, cleaning the car and filing the papers on your desk may all be urgent, but preparing a strategic plan, leading an evangelism team and organising a social outreach are tasks that are important. 

One of the keys to successful leadership is making time for the important, and not allowing them to be squeezed out by the urgent.

 Stickability

If you adopt a method of time management because it is “good for you” or “the correct thing”, but is not really you, you’re likely not to stick at it.  

The more your system of time management reflects you and your preferences the more you are likely to have success in the longer term.  Give yourself the biggest advantage you can. 

I recognise that, for many, the very idea of life being organised and structured seems unnatural and awkward.  But the effort of getting past this is more than worth it.  I know many people who have pushed through their own internal resistance and adopted simple time management techniques as a way of life.   Without exception, they have experienced good results within weeks and have gone on to enjoy a much higher level of effectiveness in their ministry.

 

Still not convinced?  Let me finish with an observation that you won't often hear from a senior officer.  

If you’ve done any ministry training you’ve had it drummed into you that the worst possible time to prepare your Sunday morning sermon is on Saturday, right?  However, I know officers who have liberated themselves from this “should” and regularly produce their very best work under the pressure of knowing they are going to be in front of a congregation within 24 hours!  This is what works best for them.  On the other hand, I personally start to feel uncomfortable if it’s not done by Wednesday.  All of which goes to underscore the point . . . .

A successful time management system is one that bends to your preferences.

What really motivates people?

“De-motivated” is not the opposite to “motivated”

Psychologist Frederick Herzberg’s 1968 article, "One More Time, How Do You Motivate Employees?" still holds records amongst the most reprinted and most requested management articles of all time. 

But why? 

In essence, because Herzberg was the first researcher to cut through all the mumbo-jumbo about motivation and present something that had real science behind it.   

Herzberg and his team interviewed large numbers of accountants and engineers in the highly industrialised area around the City of Pittsburgh.  His findings were surprising. 

He concluded that the things that motivate and the things that de-motivate are not related to one another.

He described the de-motivators, or “hygiene factors” as he called them, as those things that do not give positive satisfaction, but will lead to dissatisfaction if they are absent. They’re not part of the actual work, but the things that surround it, such as: 

• Fair and reasonable organisational policies, 
• Good leadership and management,
• Reasonable pay and a fair pay structure.  

The motivators are those things that actual increase satisfaction and motivate us to work harder and smarter.  The most important of these are: 

• Challenging work,
• Recognition,
• Responsibility,
• Matching the right person to the right job. 

(Herzberg's point is well illustrated in this little video that was my “Link of the Week” a few weeks back.)

In the local corps setting the implications of this may surprise you (then again, perhaps not if you think about it for a moment).

Hygiene Factors

We don’t have to worry about the fact that as an NGO we pay less than the commercial world.  Paying a reasonable salary under a fair structure is essential, but once this is achieved if we think that by offering more money we will increase motivation we would be wrong.  

(By the way, under this model the fair and reasonable salary structure for volunteers is zero.  Volunteers are not in it for the money, and many would be affronted if they thought that we thought that money would made a difference to their commitment and service!)

However, we do have to make sure that our Army and our local corps provides a framework of fair and reasonable policies (such things as Orders and Regulations, Official Minutes, and local practices).  And, in a people-based, frontline-oriented organisation such as The Salvation Army, if we think that some of these policies are unfair or unreasonable it is our duty to advocate for change.

But the area we have most influence over is our own management/leadership style.  Fairness and reasonableness have to be hallmarks of everything we do as a leader; otherwise it will lead to dissatisfaction amongst the members of our team. 

(If you’re not convinced about this, spend a few minutes thinking back to a leader or boss under whom you were dissatisfied or de-motivated.  Did he/she manage you with fairness and reasonableness?  Probably not!)

Motivators

On the other hand (and this is the really exciting part), Herzberg has given us a simple plan to motivate our team. Once we have put them in the right job, we go to the next step by giving them responsibility, challenge and recognition. 

Essentially, people respond positively to being given more responsibility, and being given greater challenges.  (I know this is counter-intuitive for many leaders, so see “Why tasks don’t stay delegated” to learn how to effectively give people more responsibility and challenges in a way that works.)

And recognition for their work; a note of thanks, a gift, a certificate, a public recognition ceremony or even a simple “thank you” goes a long way to increasing motivation.  

Why do 50% of leaders fail?

In my passion to encourage and promote evidence-based approaches to management and leadership (as opposed to the particularly high proportion of mumbo-jumbo that the subject seems to attract) I was delighted to stumble upon this gem from INSEAD’s Professor of Organisational Behaviour,Michael Jarret.  

In this thirteen-minute interview, he has evidence-based answers for questions like:

1. Why do 50% of leaders fail? 
2. Does personality make a leader?
3. What are the big five factors for successful leadership? 
4. How can we recruit and select good leaders? 
5. Is managing upwards good, bad or indifferent?
6. Is it important for the leader to be upbeat in the workplace? 
7. Does leadership coaching really work? 
8. What are the challenges of managing X and Y gens?
9. How will the culture of leadership change over the next ten years? 

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Theory X or Theory Y Manager?

“The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.” 

So wrote MIT Professor Douglas McGregor in the late 1950’s in describing an attitude of many managers, common then as it is now. 

McGregor proposed that managers’ attitude to their employees fall somewhere on a continuum of “Theory X” managers on one end and “Theory Y” managers on the other. 

The Theory X Manager believes that his employees:    

• Have a built-in dislike of work and will avoid it if they can,
• Have to be coerced, controlled, directed and threatened with punishment,
• Want to directed,
• Want to avoid responsibility, and
• Have very little ambition.

On the other hand, the Theory Y manager believes that her employees:   

• See effort in the workplace as natural as it is at rest or play,
• Welcome opportunities to be self-directed,
• Enjoy the satisfaction of achievement,
• Don't want to avoid responsibility, but rather seek it, and
• want the opportunity to be very creative and imaginative at work.

 The implications for management style are clear. 

The Theory X manager will tend to be distrusting and micro-managing.  He will tend to be poor at delegating and somewhat distance in his relationships. He will tend to see his role as policemen and judge. 

The Theory Y manager will tend to be more relational, more engaged with her team and will try to create a more collaborative workplace.  She tends to see herself as one who resources and supports the team and takes responsibility for their emotional safety. 

(By the way, all these things are true of organisations, too.  Just as there are Theory X and Theory Y managers, so there are organisations that tend to either one end or the other of the continuum.  Scary, huh?)

So, armed with this information, here are two important questions for you to think about. 

1. Which style of management is likely to be the most effective? 
2. Which style of manager are you?   

 To help you answer the second question, here’s a quick self-test:  

Which of these statements more closely represents the way you think? 

Statement 1:

Theory X:       I have to keep on their backs otherwise they would slack off.

Theory Y:       I am confident of my team and their integrity to put in their best effort.

Statement 2:

Theory X:       I would tell someone off or even fire them sometimes as an example to keep everyone else on their toes.

Theory Y:       I only punish people respectfully, in private and after due process.

Statement 3:

Theory X:       As boss, I am the only one who should make decisions.

Theory Y:       I appropriately involve members of the team in decision making, according to their levels of capacity and responsibility.

Statement 4:

Theory X:       I keep my distance because it's important for the boss to be remote to maintain respect.

Theory Y:       I am relational with my team, understanding that the quality of my relationship with them will reflect in the standard of their work.

Statement 5:

Theory X:       When things go wrong my first thought is to blame members of the workforce.

Theory Y:       When things go wrong my first thought is to consider if and where I may have gone wrong.

Statement 6:

Theory X:       At the discussion table, my opinion is the one that counts.

Theory Y:       I sometimes remain quiet in meetings so that team members can express their ideas and creativity.

Why tasks don’t stay delegated

Have you ever wondered why tasks don’t stay delegated?  Sometimes it seems that even the simplest of tasks need so much hands-on supervision we can’t help thinking “It would have been easier to do it myself!”

This is even truer in an environment such as a not-for-profit or church in which most of our “workers” are volunteers with a heart of gold who want to serve the Lord, giving of themselves sacrificially, and whom we feel we cannot performance-manage in the same way we would in a professional workplace.

Of course, it doesn’t make sense to give into the temptation to do the job ourselves.  We do that and we cease to be a leader / manager. 

Some years ago, I had a conversation with a corps officer who was going through this frustration.  He had a corps treasurer who was a lovely saintly soul; honest and reliable, caring and compassionate, but lacking in attention to detail.  The result was a high level of errors, reports not completed on time, and a considerable amount of checking and fixing that the CO had to do. 

The CO was so frustrated that he said he was thinking about taking the role off the treasurer and doing the task himself.   During the course of our conversation, I asked him if there was another person who could take on the role.  There was not.  I asked him how much time he actually spent on checking up on the treasurer.  He said about one to two hours a week.  I asked him how much time it would take if he took over the treasurer’s role.  He said about four or five hours.  So, we concluded, even under these adverse conditions he has saved himself between two and four hours every week by delegating.

In most cases like this, a proper assessment of the situation will confirm that, even if you have to do a lot of massaging, a delegated task is best left delegated. 

I went on to ask the officer what he was doing to skill up the treasurer.  He expressed the thought (herein somewhat sanitised) that the treasurer was working to his capacity and that he was not going to improve no matter what. 

“Does he know that you check and fix his work?  I asked.  “We have never discussed it, but he must know, because the figures are changed”, he replied.  We talked about how that may make the treasurer feel. 

“Why not give him a compassionate and caring feedback session based on the fixes you make each week?” I ventured.  “There is no need to be judgemental, just make a note of the changes and explain them to him.  Make sure that you communicate your appreciation of him doing the job and point out some of the things that are going right as well.” 

To be honest, neither of us expected this approach to make much of a difference, but we felt that it was doing the right thing by the treasurer.  So I was surprised when I met the corps officer a few months later and he reported both a change in attitude and an improvement in accuracy.  (There are a whole load of psychological and practical reasons why this approach works, but that’s for another post maybe.)

Delegation (especially with volunteers) has to geared to both the nature of the person and the nature of the job.

But how can we do this in a quick and easy-to-apply way?

The 3C approach captures three of the most important variable factors to be considered when delegating: the capacity of the worker/volunteer, and the complexity and criticality of the task. 

The capacity of the worker is the degree to which this person has what it takes to do this job.  Two “big ticket” items in helping you assess this quickly and painlessly are in the answers to the questions:

1. Does this person have the right attitude?
2. How well has he/she done this kind of work before?

The complexity of the task is an estimate of how complicated it is, and its

criticality is a reflection of its importance to the success or failure of your section, corps or organisation.  If it’s done badly, will it have a large or small impact?

  

(A full size version of this diagram is available by clicking on the picture.)

If the task is less critical and less complex, then less engagement is required from the leader than if it is more complex and critical.  And the greater the capacity of the worker, the less leader-engagement is required in terms of instruction, supervision and accountability systems. 

 So, what are the take-home messages from all this? 

1.    It is almost always worth delegating, even if you have to monitor closely,

2.    Delegating is never setting and forgetting.  There is always some degree of follow-up required.

Happy delegating!

Public Speaking – Making it look easy (7)

Gems from around the blogosphere

In this, the final of my series on public speaking, I want to share some gems from around the blogosphere that might provide some interesting reading and help psych you up for becoming an effective public speaker. 

“What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Public Speaking” is a great little starter-pack, written in a semi-humorous style; a good place to start if you want to break yourself in gently. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223109

Infobarrel also provide some entry-level hints, somewhat more seriously, with this post:

http://www.infobarrel.com/Successful_Public_Speaking

For a comprehensive range of public presentation skills, you can’t go past Public Speaking International.  They have posts on just about every aspect of public speaking;

http://www.publicspeakinginternational.com/blog/

There is no place in public speaking for egocentricity, and in “The ‘Other-Conscious’ in Public Speaking”  Jim De Piante explains why.

http://blogs.pmi.org/blog/voices_on_project_management/2012/04/the-other-conscious-in-public.html

Speech and presentation leadership coach, communication consultant and author of “Speaking that Connects”, Eileen N. Sinett presents 10 quick tips to help you add polish to your speaking in this post.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/7UzZ7Y/humancapitalleague.com/Home/23709

Helium bloggers, Happy Dan, David Dewitt and Daniel Xio Wang, suggests a number of good ideas for the new public speaker to overcome the fear and hatred of speaking.

http://www.helium.com/items/972918-how-to-overcome-the-fear-of-public-speaking

http://www.helium.com/items/1802805-how-to-improve-public-speaking-skills

http://www.helium.com/items/1869437-advice-for-those-who-hate-public-speaking

Finally, for those of you who are ready for a bit of controversy, this next post might whet your appetite.  Kristi Hedges, a former trainer in public speaking, claims that training is a waste of time and money.  She claims that if you buy a book on the subject and practice in front of a webcam, you can get all the training you need.  Is she right?  See what you think.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/04/19/public-speaking-trainer-confesses-dont-waste-your-money-on-this/

Enjoy your reading – and your speaking!

Public Speaking - Making it look easy (6)

Dealing with a hostile audience - Five realities

If I were to ask experienced speakers how many times they had faced a hostile audience, most could count them on the fingers of one hand.  So why is it such a big fear? 

At the end of my last post, I pointed to five realities that run counter to the illusion that fear creates.  Here they are again . . .

1.  The fear is greater than the reality,
2. Most audiences are supportive,
3. Usually the worst that will happen is indifference,
4. When there is hostility it is usually from one or two people only,
5. The techniques for handling hostile audiences are the same as those for handling Q&A’s (more or less).

 (In this post I am not talking about some special situations that are by nature volatile, such as the closure of a service or a workplace, engagement in political activity, or challenging environmental or racial injustice.  These are somewhat special circumstances for which the speaker is usually appropriately briefed, supported and resourced.  In this post I am talking about the kind of occasions you might expect in ordinary corps / centre life.)

In the (unlikely) event of a challenge to what you are saying, here is an approach that has more than a reasonable chance of you coming out of it looking good, having acted with grace and retained the sympathy of the audience. 

1. Validate the person making the challenge (perhaps by thanking him/her for his/her concern about the issue), but not the veracity of the challenge (unless it is right of course).
2. If the statement is fundamental to the argument of your presentation explain in two or three quick points why you believe you are right, validate the challenger again, and carry on with the presentation, all the while being conciliatory in your approach. 
3. If the statement is not fundamental to your presentation, give a statement that asserts your belief in it, but your willingness to review it (after the presentation). Again a conciliatory tone is important.
4. Do not invite any further discussion.
5. Move on.

 You can repeat this for one or two times only, but if it goes beyond this you clearly have a credibility problem looming.  You have to take decisive action in some way.  An experienced speaker may be able to draw on the support of the wider audience without overtly putting down the challenger by gently pointing to the anti-social behaviour of the challenger.    

Don’t buy into an argument – simply challenge the antisocial behaviour

For example, I will politely but clearly challenge the behaviour so gently that it is barely seen as a challenge, perhaps something like this;  “Thanks for your comment.  I see that you disagree with my position - and I'm fine with that.  But rather than take up everyone else’s time, is it OK if you and I have a separate chat about this after the presentation?”

As soon as you do this, you have changed the dynamic in the room.  He begins to be exposed as a person behaving badly, and you are becoming established as a person who cares about everybody in the room. 

It may take another one or two attempts at this, but a rational person will realise that as he persists he is increasingly being perceived as small, petty-minded and ego-centric.  He will back off.  On the other hand, an irrational person might keep going of course, but all the time he will be strengthening your sympathy from the audience (as long as you remain calm and self-possessed), and even those who were against your position will be filled with respect for you as a person. 

Some do’s and don’ts

Do:      Remember that your goal in a skirmish is to act with grace under fire, to keep your head while others are losing their’s, to represent yourself, your organisation and your God in a way that you will have no shame about the next day.  You do not want even one sleepless night with the thought “I wish I hadn’t said . . .xxx” going round your head.

Do:      Step forward toward the challenger (It strengthens your own resolve and sends a message that you are not intimidated).

Do:      Seek to validate the challenger without patronising him.

Do:      Give a reasonable time for the challenger to express his view, but then . . .

Do:      Interrupt the challenger politely and graciously when he is going on too long.

Don’t: Allow the challenger to take over the session.

Don’t: Allow yourself to be forced into agreeing to something you do not believe to be right or inappropriate. 

In my next post, the final of my series on public speaking, I will share some some gems from around the blogosphere that will provide interesting reading and help prepare you to become a highly effective public speaker.