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Changing Direction: How to Keep Cultural Inertia from Limiting Productivity

Posted on 06/21/2013 by ·

"The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia." Elbert Hubbard, American writer and philosopher. "Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia." -- Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize winning French biologist and surgeon. Dictionaries define "inertia" as a tendency to resist change. In physical terms, a body in motion tends to stay in motion in a straight line, while a body at rest tends to stay at rest. But other types of inertia exist, and cultural inertia represents the one that applies to most of us most often. You probably know all you care to about bureaucratic inertia, for example. Once a bureaucracy makes a rule, woe to the individual who tries to buck it. Similarly, some corporate cultures resist change, often to … [Read more...]

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Letting Go: When Should You Cancel a Failing Project?

Posted on 06/19/2013 by ·

"When things go wrong, don't go with them." -- Elvis Presley, American singer. "Don't throw good money after bad." -- American folk saying. As much as it goes against the grain for most of us, sometimes the most productive thing a manager can do is give up on a project. Now, I'm not suggesting you throw in the towel as soon as the going gets a little tough; productive people never give up without a fight. But there may come a time when you hit a point of diminishing returns, when investing further resources in the product would just be wasteful. Remember Microsoft Bob, or Gerber's attempt to create adult entrees? Both companies wisely dropped those products when they flopped. Little Clues As a manager, canceling failing projects may be one of your most important secondary … [Read more...]

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The Snowball Analogy: How to Make Your Organization Lighter and More Agile

Posted on 06/17/2013 by ·

"Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." -- Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. "Efficiency is doing better what is already being done." -- Peter F. Drucker, Austrian-American management guru. Back when I was a kid, a big winter storm hit my hometown, delivering perfect snowman material—so naturally, my brother and I decided to build a huge one. We started with a very large base; easy enough. The real challenge was the next snowball up...it was just too heavy for us to lift. Luckily, my brother was a budding engineer. Using our Red Flyer wagon as a fulcrum and a 2 x 8 board as a lever, he lifted the middle snowball onto the base while I guided it. After that, finishing was easy! In a … [Read more...]

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Crises and Firefighting: How to Avoid Managing by Exception

Posted on 06/14/2013 by ·

"Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude." -- Colin Powell, former four-star general and U.S. Secretary of State. In recent years, I've observed the increasing popularity of "management by exception" in business. This concept basically boils down to leaders making decisions and assessing performance based on significant deviations from a project's goals, while otherwise ignoring its daily execution. Leaders who practice it don't want to be bothered unless something goes seriously wrong. But there’s a difference being agile and being disengaged. Given the nature of business today, this comes as no surprise. First of all, fewer managers juggling more projects means they can spend less time on traditional management, even as they face demands for higher productivity. New … [Read more...]

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Obsessive or Productive? The Difference Between Being Focused and Rigid

Posted on 06/12/2013 by ·

"Choose your productive obsession right now. Maybe you know exactly which one to select. Even if you're positive, give your idea a once-over and make sure it meets your current meaning needs and intentions..." -- Eric and Ann Maisel, authors of Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions. "Being taught that more is better, we're jumping to erroneous conclusions way too early, and all of a sudden being more productive has no limits in terms of enough." -- Slavko Desik, business blogger. While superior productivity is neither simple nor easily reduced to its component parts, most people would universally agree that productivity requires a focus on priorities—a focus that excludes the extraneous, stripping away anything that doesn't contribute to a specific goal. Some might … [Read more...]

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All the Way Around: Tips for a Quick 360 Review

Posted on 06/10/2013 by ·

"Twice and thrice over, as they say, good it is to repeat and review what is good." -- Plato, ancient Greek philosopher. We've all undergone job performance reviews. Ideally, you experience them at least once a year—hopefully more often if your organization keeps a tighter rein on strategic alignment. As a manager, you've probably conducted any number of them on your own employees. Until a few years ago, such evaluations went in one direction only: downward. All criticisms, praise, and suggestions came from leadership to team members. In recent years, however, the workplace has begin to evolve away from the "Me Boss, You Not" attitude. Professional work has become more of a collaborative affair. Many managers lead by consensus and example, rather than by handing down edicts from senior … [Read more...]

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Undeniable Competence: How to Be Superb at What You Do

Posted on 06/05/2013 by ·

"No human being will work hard at anything unless they believe that they are working for competence." -- William Glasser, American psychiatrist. "Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States. Competence. These three syllables mean everything in business, art, and industry alike, embodying as they do an individual's overall capability as a practitioner of their chosen field. Like the older terms "able seaman" or "journeyman," competence signifies an individual's capacity to handle all aspects of a particular job, and even in our overhyped world remains something to be proud of. Yet competence is a moving target, since it doesn't always translate from one task to … [Read more...]

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How Much Time Will It Take? How to Estimate Task Duration

Posted on 06/03/2013 by ·

"Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." -- Douglas Hofstadter, American professor of cognitive science. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." -- Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. Workplace productivity springs heavily from one's skill at time management—although it’s not the only thing that determines productivity. Time management really boils down to self management. After all, how can you actually manage time itself, when we all get the same fixed amount? You can’t be so good at it that you create a 30-hour day for yourself. Therefore, your ability to estimate a task's duration becomes crucial when setting your schedule. Estimates come easiest … [Read more...]

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Serving Two Masters: Dividing Your Attention Without Diluting Your Efforts

Posted on 05/29/2013 by ·

"I have eight different bosses right now... So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it." -- Peter Gibbons in the Mike Judge film Office Space, as portrayed by Ron Livingston. "The President has only 190 million bosses. The Vice President has 190 million and one." -- Hubert H. Humphrey, 38th Vice President of the Unites States. While very few of us have suffered the fate of Office Space's Peter Gibbons (with his eight oblivious supervisors), working for multiple bosses within the same company has become a fairly commonplace situation nowadays as matrixed organizations consolidate, shrink, and reorganize. Often these situations last just a few weeks or months; however, sometimes they become permanent. Administrative professionals … [Read more...]

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The Sweet Spot: How and When to Schedule Productive Meetings

Posted on 05/28/2013 by ·

"If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.'." -- Dave Barry, American humorist. "Maybe meetings have become a life-form capable of calling themselves and reproducing via human hosts." -- Scott Adams, American cartoonist (Dilbert). Nowhere in the business arena does the absolutely necessary collide with the potentially wasteful more often than in meetings. Few terms have given American workers more reason to shudder, with the possible exception of "downsizing"—and at least that's over quickly. All kidding aside, meetings remain more necessary than not. While you can diminish their frequency by taking advantage of technology and informal chats, you can't eliminate them … [Read more...]

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