Maintaining Priorities Year-Round

I'm often drawn into conversations about productivity around this time of year.  People are looking for tricks on how to maintain momentum during the holidays or re-establish momentum in the new year. 

I think the answers to both are found by using the same disciplines.  In fact, my advice works year-round.  It just seems like we notice the need more during this time of year.

There are three things you can do that will help you and your organization.

First.  It is absolutely crucial that you get and stay focused on the critical few priorities that are most valuable and important right now.

I once worked with a CEO who had the belief that since he did not really know how much could be done, he would get the most out of his people by loading up their lists way past their maximum capacity.  He just figured that good people working hard on an impossible list would get done the largest quantity of items. He thought he would get more output this way than if he just guessed at what the right capacity load should be. 

This didn't work very well.  It went wrong on a number of counts.

Emphasizing quantity so directly had a negative impact on quality.  Items got checked off the list, but the work was often not done very well and had to be re-worked.  Busy but not productive.

Since people figured out they could not do everything, they often guessed at what was most important.  Or they worked on what was most fun or easiest.  The result was near impossible integration with everyone working on uncoordinated tasks. 

If they received a follow up on something they were not working on, they would drop everything they were doing and start working on the new item.  Their people felt jerked around and after a few of those it became clear that not much of anything ever got completed.  It didn't take many of these fire drills to completely ruin the team's productivity. 

This approach also resulted in an unnecessary increase in stress levels in an already high stress organization.

What eventually helped this CEO and senior team was very, very precise agreement on which projects were first…. Yes, prioritization!

Second.  It is absolutely critical that capacity be understood and managed. During times like holiday and summer periods original planning must be reviewed and re-set to allow for the time that people will be away.

In the case mentioned above, the solution would be only partly successful by setting the priority list if the CEO still would expect his list of 55 prioritized items completed without respect to rational capacity management.

This team had to learn to fight it out and to agree on not only what was first or second, but also where to draw the line.  They all had to agree on what would be worked on and what would wait until later.  Doing this once at planning or budget time is not enough.  It has to be done over and over, and especially at those times of year when time is taken away from the job.

Once the team figured it out and practiced it year-round, they saw a big reduction of stress and an increase in momentum.  When holiday and summer time rolled around they learned to schedule special sessions to address capacity taking into account vacation times and travel.  More got done, no one had to feel guilty about being away, and stress was reduced because expectations were realistic.

Third and Last.  Eliminate perfection assumptions in your planning models.

Whether it is financial planning, product development, strategic planning, recruiting, merger integration savings, capacity planning or your own work planning, I have found that organizations fall into the trap of assuming perfection in their planning cases.

It’s probably not as important to dig into why this happens than to recognize it does happen and to work very hard to make our planning assumptions realistic.

If we do our prioritization work well, and try very hard to apply rational capacity management, it can all still come apart if our planning assumes that all elements will go perfectly and exactly as planned and in the optimum time and at the optimum cost.  Nothing ever goes perfectly.  Emergencies come upon us.  Customers present immediate demands.  Stuff happens.

I'm not suggesting easy plans, nor am I suggesting not reaching for big outcomes.  I'm just suggesting that you face reality when you predict how long something will take, how much it will cost, how many people will be needed, and how much time they really have to contribute to your tasks.

I remember in our unnamed example above that a vice president was being pushed very hard about a project completion date.  He tried very unsuccessfully to persuade senior management why more time would be needed.  The interchange was an almost one-way conversation about how long each project element ‘should’ take.  Eventually, I remember hearing something like… “If you can’t get this done by then, I’ll find someone who can.”  He was removed from his job.  I also remember the replacement candidate saying that he could deliver the project on time because he agreed the planning assumptions were ‘sensible’.  The result was that the project missed the deadline and came in exactly when the original vice president said it would.

Obviously that was an extreme example, but it is meant to jar you into thinking about how much perfection you place or demand in your plans.

Difficult periods do not have to result in more stress, missed deadlines, and lost momentum.  Remembering these three simple keys will help your organization stay on track.

Open Minds.... and the Right Questions

I often run across senior executives who think they alone know the answer to their organization's problems. They usually want help in masterminding an approach to team leadership that gets their lower level people to do just what they want. Sometimes they ask for the magic bullet of management training with the mistaken hope that it alone will create all the change they want. Well, I have to confess I don't have a very successful record of helping these types of senior executives very much.

But thankfully I also run across another kind of senior executive. I find some with wide open minds. I find some whose leadership style emphasizes getting the best thinking out of the people that they lead. I find some who seek the answer from those closest to the problem and where the actual work really gets done. I find some who have become very skilled (or want to be) at asking the right questions in order to unlock the wisdom of the team.

Instead of just trying to show how smart they are or deciding every crucial issue, this second group of executives display leadership qualities that allow them to combine their own experience and knowledge with that of the people they lead.

Can you guess which group consistently gets a higher percentage of successful outcomes? Ask yourself today where you stand. Consider building your leadership style to include a wide open mind and asking the right questions.

Time Management and Leadership Development

A much overlooked element in leadership training is time management.  Sure, most leadership development programs touch on it, but the facts are that most managers are not good at it.  I can only surmise that time management training is not working.

I want to make time management simple for you.  Don’t concern yourself right now with complex programs that teach you how to juggle A priorities, B priorities, urgent vs. non-urgent, strategic vs. non-strategic, etc.  We can talk about those things later. 

The single most important thing you must do to better manage your time is to really KNOW HOW YOU SPEND IT!

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it?  It is, except so few managers understand it.  Recently I was working with a management team helping them find the time needed to do the most important things.  I asked each of them to tell me how they currently spend their time.  This was a very difficult question to answer for every one of them.

It is not because they were not smart.  All of them were very bright accomplished leaders.  But, we all get going so fast that we lose any sense of what we are actually doing.  You end your day and have no clear sense of what you actually did. 

Until you get a full understanding of how you spend your time you will never manage it well.  Slow down.  For the next week write down everything you do and how much time it takes.  Review what you have done with your time.  Are you doing the things you want to do?  I'll bet not. 

Armed with this new knowledge of how you actually spend your time start making the necessary changes that will allow you to spend more time on the most important things. 

This is hard to do at first, but keep at it.  It gets easier the more you do it.  

Real time management is about taking control of your time.  You cannot control it if you do not understand it. 
 

Only the Bold Will Survive

Playing to win as opposed to playing not to lose. You have heard that phrase before. In fact, you have probably heard it enough to consider it a cliché. But in your business environment it is not a cliché. The organizations that survive for years to come will make this their guiding strategic principle.

The objective is to continuously look for ways to create competitive advantage. For many organizations this requires that they start thinking differently than they ever have before.

For example, I was leading a series of strategic planning sessions with a large company. At a break in one of the sessions the CEO took me aside to express his frustration about the way his team was thinking. He said, “We have to find a way to get us to think like entrepreneurs. Sure, we are talking about important things like cost control, product effectiveness and customer satisfaction. But, we are being way too inwardly focused. We have to broaden our thinking. Nobody is thinking about how to grow. We are not thinking about how to take market share from our closest competitors. And we are certainly not thinking abut how we can move into new geographic or service line markets. If we stay on this track we will get steamrolled by our competitors.”

To think the way this CEO wanted his team to think requires that you recognize that you are in a battle and then take the fight right to your opponent. A great example of this is a hospital whose CEO once described the organization as “a plane flying into the ground.” He recognized that his organization was under attack on three fronts.

Front #1 was an array of money losing ventures. Each of these ventures was started with the best of intentions. However, there was no discipline to the decision-making. If it seemed like an idea that no one could prove was a bad one it was launched. The CEO and his team analyzed each of these ventures. If they determined that it could not be turned around within a few months they shut it down.

He then implemented a disciplined and structured decision-making process to assure that his organization would never again threaten itself with poorly analyzed decisions.

Front #2 was the threat of a very deep-pocketed competitor buying market share all around them. This CEO recognized that while this competitor had lots of money their leadership team was disorganized and very inwardly focused. He saw a window of opportunity to significantly enlarge his market position. He capitalized on the opportunity by quickly acquiring two hospitals and two medical groups before his wealthier competitor got its act together.

He and his team then did the best job I have ever seen integrating these acquisitions into a new and more complex enterprise. But, I'll save that story for a future post!

That brings me to front #3. The largest health plan in the newly enlarged organization’s market was being very open about its intentions to significantly reduce contract rates. If this happened the organization would once again be “a plane flying into the ground.”

Many in the organization were resigned to this fate. They felt that the health plan was too big to fight and without that contract they would not have enough business to survive. But the CEO and some of his top executives saw things differently. They chose to go on the offensive.

They launched a multi-faceted effort that included:

• Direct negotiations with the health plan demanding increases that would boost net revenue by 10% or they would not contract with that health plan

• Enlisting political support within the government

• Direct meetings with business leaders to educate them on the importance of the contract increase.

• A media campaign to educate the public on the importance of the contract increase.

The CEO and his organization won. They got the full contract increase they were seeking securing their financial success for years to come.

There are two important things to take away from this story. One is to believe you can win. Do not resign yourself to slowly being squeezed out of business. You deserve better than that and so does your community.

Second is to act quickly once you see your opportunities. Fortune favors the bold!

Mindset vs. Toolkit

I've witnessed many debates between executives on the relative merits of LEAN, Six Sigma, PDCA and scores of other codified problem solving processes. The people are always arguing about which set of problem solving tools is the best. I think they are all missing the point.

What is the point you ask? There is a great story about a Toyota executive attending a LEAN conference as a keynote speaker. After his speech he was asked why no one inside Toyota had ever written a book about LEAN considering that Toyota had pioneered the concept.

He looked a little bemused and said, “Because there is nothing to write about.” His audience asked what he meant by that. “Well, all the book would say is ask the people doing the work if they know what they are supposed to do, do they know how to do it and what stops them from doing it right every time…then ask them the same questions again and again and so forth.”

His point was that the value of any process, whether LEAN, Six Sigma, PDCA, etc. is not the tools advocated by that process. The value is in the mindset that develops in the people over time. A mindset, a culture that is always focused on how to do a better job.

If you go to Amazon.com you will find over 270,000 books on LEAN process. Yet the founders of the concept have not written a single one of them. These experts know that the tools are easy to learn how to use. The important work is establishing the right mindset in an organization.

Many of my clients think I have a codified process with a set of tools that I always use. I really don’t. I make up new tools all of the time.  Sometimes in the middle of a problem solving session! What I have is a mindset that calls me to drive teams to see their circumstances as clearly as possible from as many different angles as possible.  I will use any means I can dream up, borrow or steal to make that happen!

That is my recommendation to you. Hold everyone on your management team accountable for continually improving the processes and results in their areas. Do not get hung up on what specific process they use to accomplish this. Let them create the way that will work best with their people. Establish the mindset for continual improvement by relentlessly following up with them to track their progress.

This three-pronged approach of requiring managers to continually work to improve, allowing them the flexibility to do it their own way, and regularly following up to make sure what they are doing is working will establish a mindset for improvement that will be far more valuable than any tool kit you can buy.