Know what'll kill employee engagement deader than a doorknob? Micromanaging. Even if you start out with an office full of bright, innovative people, looking over their shoulders and correcting them every step of the way will eventually grind them down. Before long, you'll have a collection of disengaged grumblers who either can't wait to get out from under your thumb, or who just hunker down and don’t do anything, in hopes that it'll soon be over. That's because when you micromanage someone, you're practically shouting in their ear: "You're incompetent! I can't trust you to do the tiniest thing right!" Now, how would that make you feel? If you're a micromanager, you may not realize it; you may just think you're detail-oriented and want to be sure that your employee does everything … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: The Crafty Chameleon
"Quantifying the gap between exemplary and average employees demonstrates the tremendous potential for organizations to increase the performance of their workforces." —Tom Gilbert, author of Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance In the last four blog entries, I've explained my new Productivity Management Matrix in considerable detail. This metric compares levels of employee engagement and performance against one another, organizing workers into four broad categories: Campers, Cheerleaders, Defectors, and Productives. But as within any categorization system, not everyone fits neatly. For example, what if someone is just plain average on both fronts? What if both their performance and engagement levels, taken together, fall right smack in the middle of all four quadrants—on the … [Read more...]
Time Management: Productivity Minute Video: Match Your Tasks to Your Energy Level
Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), discusses matching your tasks to your energy level throughout the day. Know your own rhythms and plan your work around them. (c) 2010 Laura Stack - All Rights Reserved www.TheProductivityPro.com … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: The Prodigious Productive
"When employees and employers, even coworkers, have a commitment to one another, everyone benefits." — Donald Trump "You can lead an employee to water, but if you find one who knows a better path to the water, shut up and get a bucket." —business writer Dale Dauten. Last but far from least, let's take a look at the ultimate employee category in my Productivity Management Matrix: the Productives. These are the extraordinary people who manage to combine high engagement with high performance in a synergistic way that makes them the superstars of just about any organization. How to Spot a Productive Productives are the employees you wish everyone could be. The combine a firm sense of engagement with high performance, making life easier for everyone else on the team—which usually makes … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: The Dour Defector
"I consider it the highest compliment when my employees go out and start their own companies in competition with me. I always send them a plant to wish them well. Of course, it's a cactus.” —Norm Brodsky, entrepreneur and author. "The actively disengaged employees are the "cave dwellers." They're "Consistently Against Virtually Everything." They're not just unhappy at work; they're busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, actively disengaged workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish." -- Curt Coffman, author of First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently If you've been reading my blog recently, you're no doubt familiar with my Productivity Management Matrix , a method by which I categorize employees based on two factors: performance … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: The Chirpy Cheerleader
"Save the cheerleader, save the world." -- An often-repeated phrase on the NBC-TV series Heroes. "In the early days, I didn’t have the money to pay decent salaries, so I didn’t get good people. I got nice people, but I didn’t get good employees." -- Louise Hay, self-help author Recently, I introduced you to my Productivity Management Matrix, a quick way of categorizing your team members that compares an individual's competence with their level of work engagement. When constructing the matrix, I realized that workers tend to fall into four basic types, which I call Campers, Cheerleaders, Defectors, and Productives. Last time, I described Campers: the low-performance, low-engagement chair-huggers who come to work for one reason and one reason only: to get a paycheck. This time, I'll … [Read more...]
Productivity Management: Dealing with the Camper
"Since my last report, he has reached rock bottom and has started to dig." -- Anonymous report from an employee evaluation (possibly apocryphal) "American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors." -- Dave Barry, humorist In September's newsletter, I introduced you to a new idea: the concept of group productivity management, based on the six Productivity Keys I outlined in my most recent book, SuperCompetent. Now, I created SuperCompetent for those individuals who want to raise their personal productivity to the maximum possible level; so as written, … [Read more...]
Productivity Management from a SuperCompetent Perspective
As you probably know, John Wiley and Sons released my latest book, SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best, this past August 9. Like my previous books, SuperCompetent addresses productivity from an individual viewpoint, in this case describing how the reader can achieve career success by applying six specific productivity keys in the workplace. Within days of its release, a client asked me how SuperCompetent applies to managing people, not just individual productivity. In other words, how does the Six Keys philosophy work in a team environment? This set me to thinking, especially when I considered the issue of employee engagement (last month's newsletter article), and how that factor impacts productivity. Formulating the Matrix Because engagement is a … [Read more...]
Business Productivity: The Myth of Getting It All Done
There will always be more things to do than there is time to do them. How do you concentrate on what is really important? How do you prioritize your tasks? Laura Stack talks about the myth of "getting it all done." (C) 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. https://theproductivitypro.com … [Read more...]
ACCO Brands, Branded Office Products Leader, Kicks Off Everyday Heroes Contest
ACCO Brands, a leader in office products through industry- leading brands such as Swingline, GBC, Day-Timer, Quartet, Wilson Jones and Kensington among others is scouring the country in search of Everyday Heroes. What is an Everyday Hero? It’s a person who knows how to use his/her office tools to make things run smoothly; a person to whom everyone turns to pull it all together in a pinch; an individual who quietly gets the job done – often without being recognized. Everyday Heroes can enter the contest now at accoheroes.com. ACCO Brands will award a grand prize of $1,000 redeemable at office product dealers to one winner in each of three categories – business, home/home office and school. Often, the hustle and bustle of everyday life overshadows difference-making contributions or … [Read more...]
