Business focus

Overload at Work

Overload at Work is problem that often is seen, and rarely dealt with. Many people seem to feel that Overload at Work is inevitable, and make no attempt to impact change. Below we talk about:

Symptoms of Overload at Work
The Good and Bad News About Overload at Work
Three Steps to Overcoming Overload at Work

Symptoms of Overload at Work

In some cases, people don’t recognize Overload at Work, as more of the dysfunctional behavior seems to become normal:

Continually working obscene hours. If there is a project, or some exceptional circumstances going on, then working extended hours may become necessary. When this temporary situation becomes permanent, it is a symptom of Overload at Work.
Missed deadlines. Sooner or later, the volume of work means that deadlines are consistently missed.
Paralysis. If you find yourself too overwhelmed to make a decision, or to take action, you are probably experiencing Overload at Work.
Poor mental or physical health. Stress can have very negative effects on the body. If you detect deterioration in mental or physical health, it could be a result of Overload at Work.

The Good and Bad News About Overload at Work

Often people feel powerless about Overload at Work. Here are the realities that contribute to this challenge:

Overload at Work is often self-imposed. Many people believe their stress is caused by the organization. In many cases, people put far more pressures and demands on themselves than are imposed externally.
You will need to do something differently than you are currently. This may mean giving up some things you actually enjoy doing.
YOU need to solve this. It is unlikely that anyone will rescue you from the current situation. It is contingent upon you to fix the problem.

Overcoming Overload at Work

Here are three steps to overcoming Overload at Work:

Know where your time currently goes
Ruthlessly schedule priorities first
Push back on demands

1. Know where your time goes

Before you make changes to improve your situation, you need a solid understanding of where you are now.

Audit your time for a period of two weeks. We suggest you record your time in 30 minute increments two or three times a day. This should take no more than a few minutes every day.
Do not lie to yourself. It is important not to rationalize where you spend your time, but rather simply record it as honestly as you can.
Use the data you collect to see where you can begin to make changes.

2. Ruthlessly Schedule Priorities

In order to overcome Overload at Work you need to schedule your most important priorities first – before you become overwhelmed by what is seemingly urgent.

First, you need to determine your priorities if you haven’t already done so.
Ensure that you have agreement from your boss on those priorities.
Even if it is only an hour a day, you need to get out of “fire-fighting mode”.
Block space on your calendar for specific priorities.
Beware of things you might like doing, but are not actually priorities
Remember that email is not work. Most often email is a huge time-killer that needs to be minimized.

3. Push Back on Demands

Question the value of every meeting you are invited to attend. If you do not see clear value in that meeting, then look for a way to get out of it.
Filter all requests through your priorities. Any demands you get need to be assessed against your priorities. If you boss is the one making those demands, then it can lead to robust discussion about the task, and your priorities.
Make yourself inaccessible at times. Do not hesitate to close your door for an hour or two at times to work on your priorities.
Ask for help where appropriate.
Delegate where appropriate

3 Things to Remember about Overload at Work:

Only You Can Fix This.
Know What Your Top Priorities are and get agreement on them.
You may have to give up some things you like doing.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about how to deal with Overload at Work (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Fast Track to Alignment: Ignore Head Office

Many moons ago, I was an Operations Manager for a big, global company. My part of the empire was very small, but I was still subject to much of the silliness that comes with being part of a huge organization.

You could have said that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, but that would have been overly-kind. There were departments at global headquarters that out and out competed with each other. The loss-control guys would send out a memo, only to be contradicted by the HR group. Of course, none of them did this knowingly – they were simply so big, that they had no idea what the other support group was doing.

This is what happens when companies face operational issues, and rather than invest in frontline managers to teach them to deal with the complexities of the business, they suck control of everything short of turning the key in the front door back far away from the core business.

The result: total and complete misalignment. Frontline managers and the employees doing the actual work that makes money are being continually pulled in all directions, and end up flying like a moth to the brightest light depending on which support department issued an email directive that day.

I made the decision to leave this organization, about a year before my ultimate departure. I still loved the business, I just didn’t like working for a large, bureaucratic company that had centralized all control and decision-making.

I can honestly say, I was at my most effective in this last year. I still wanted the business to be successful, and I cared deeply about the people I worked with. What made me (and my operation) effective and successful in this last year is that I stopped listening to head office. I did what I thought was in the best interests of the business, and largely ignored my instructions from head office.

The result? They didn’t notice I was not complying with the multiple and competing directives. They did notice our numbers were in the top ten percent in the company.

Remember you heard it here first – the fastest way to aligning your business, and ultimately generating better results is to ignore your head office. Of course, it could also be the most direct route to getting fired, too.

Let’s be careful out there.

Business Alignment Strategies

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One of the most common ailments in business today is a lack of alignment. Below we discuss Business Alignment Strategies to recognize and correct business alignment.

Identifying the absence of Business Alignment Strategies
The link between Accountability and Business Alignment
Ensuring Your Business Alignment Strategies
How to Improve Your Business Alignment Strategies
Ensuring Accountability as part of your Business Alignment Strategy
How Goals and Objectives contribute to your Business Alignment Strategy
Three Things to Remember about Business Alignment Strategies

Identifying the Absence of Business Alignment Strategies

If you suspect that Business Alignment Strategies in your organization may be lacking, here are some symptoms:

Do you have orphan projects or initiatives? Are there projects or initiatives that seem to be completely disconnected from the rest of your business, or that just don’t seem to fit in?
Do you have zombie problems or projects? If you are sure that a project has been killed multiple times, but seems to keep coming back from the dead, you may have a lack of alignment.
Direct reports that are not clear on their leaders accountabilities or goals. Ask any employee what is most important to his/her boss. If there are unclear or conflicting answers, it could be because of a lack of alignment.
Continuous lack of improvement. Is the business treading water, and not improving over time?
Managers are reaching down into the organization to do the work that should be done by the people who report to them (or even lower).

The link between Accountability and Business Alignment

Business Alignment cannot be achieved without clear accountability in an organization. Here are some definitions:

Alignment: Linking of organizational goals with team goals, and ultimately with the employees’ individual goals, actions and activities.

Accountability: The obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.

Ensuring Your Business Alignment Strategies

Goals must cascade clearly between all levels in an organization. All goals of individual contributors must be supported by development plans as well:

How to Improve Your Business Alignment Strategies

There are three core reasons your Business Alignment Strategies may not be working:

Execution
Quality
Quantity

Execution – are you cascading your departmental goals? Are you transferring them into individual goals/objectives for your team members? Or, do you not execute this and hope everyone knows what’s truly important? People will not know their role in achieving results unless goals are properly cascaded.

Quality – Are all goals SMART, clear, and aligned with the larger organizational goals? Or are they vague, not tied to a specific outcome or measure and without a deadline?

Quantity – is this a once a year exercise to keep the HR people off your back, or do you talk often about what is expected, how people are doing and what they can do to get even better?

Ensuring Accountability as part of your Business Alignment Strategy

If accountability around goals is critical to ensuring alignment, then you need to ensure that accountability is achieved. The best way to do this is use existing meetings to refine and discuss progress against goals.

How Goals and Objectives contribute to your Business Alignment Strategy

Drives focus and alignment through the organization on what’s most important.
Closes the gap between Strategy and Execution.
Helps define and drive performance.
Clarifies priorities.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Business Alignment Strategies (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Changing the Paradigm of BS

When I first started researching the Elevator Pitch for publishing this week, I was amazed to find out it was a whole industry. People take this stuff seriously – there are even whole companies dedicated to help people and organizations perfect their Elevator Speech. Then I came across this one:

“We add value to our customers by maximizing the value of human capital to leverage their assets to change their paradigms in order to transform their business.”

Wow… that is just exquisite bullsh!t. If I were playing Buzzword Bingo, I would have won the grand prize with that single sentence.

I suppose a certain amount of BS jargon is inevitable in a knowledge-based economy. It not as easy to describe what we do, as when we were all making something tangible. So, as a public service to Wily Manager readers, I’d like to deconstruct this sentence. For the record, the irony of a having guy who makes a living chatting with his buddy about how managers should manage comment on this, is not lost on me.

We add value to our customers. This means you may or may not serve any useful purpose, so you have to make sure everyone thinks you “add value” by stating it explicitly. It’s quite possible that no one is more amazed than you that you’re getting paid to do whatever it is you do to “add value”.

Maximizing the Value of Human Capital. This necessarily means that most of the people you work with hate you. You’re either involved in reducing headcount, or annoying the crap out of people to get them to do more with less resources.

To Change Their Paradigms. Really? I didn’t know anyone still used the word “Paradigms” anymore. What this probably means is that you stand up in front of groups of employees and rant at them like one of those ethically-challenged Sunday morning televangelists who asks for money to refuel his personal challenger jet. You have about the same level of credibility, too.

To Transform Their Business. A transformation is when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. In the business world transformation means that you’ll recommend and initiate a corporate reorganization that will result in the good people quitting to go work somewhere else, and the poor performers promoted three levels past their threshold of competence. Then when it goes horribly wrong, you arrange to hire back the good people as consultants at three times what they were getting paid previously.

You should be able to describe what your business does in concise terms – just make sure it doesn’t set off the BS meter ever time you open your mouth.

Describing Your Business: The Elevator Speech

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What is an Elevator Speech?

A short, highly focused statement selling an idea, course of action, or a description of your business.
The name comes from the scenario of bumping into an important decision maker, and winning her over in the short duration of an elevator ride.

When to put an Elevator Pitch to use in Describing Your Business:

When trying to persuade people as to a course of action. It may not be that you are attempting in this first meeting to close a business deal with someone, but rather likely that you would want to persuade them to meet with you to begin such a discussion.
At networking events.
When selling something – a product, idea or a business relationship.
Whenever the opportunity presents itself – so be ready.

How to structure an Elevator Speech:

You need to catch your audience’s attention immediately
When Describing Your Business, discuss benefits, not details or features of your business
When Describing Your Business, pre-empt the question, “So What?”. You need your audience to understand what is in it for them.
Move people to a specific action when describing your business. Are you looking for an appointment with a decision maker? Do you want them to order a trial offer? Be very clear what you want them to do.

The Delivery of Your Elevator Speech

Target your audience carefully. What does your audience what to hear? What type of language would they be most receptive to?
Speak in your own voice. You can’t fake authenticity. Although you need to prepare and rehearse your elevator speech, the words you choose must be appropriate to who you are, and how you wish to be perceived.

3 Things to Remember about Describing Your Business Using an Elevator Pitch:

Write it out. You shouldn’t improvise your elevator speech. You need to write it out in advance, and refine it over time.
Be prepared at all times. You should have the key points of your Elevator Pitch committed to memory.
It’s more than a slogan. Your Elevator Speech must leave no doubt what you’re in business to do, and what’s in it for them as your audience.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Describing Your Business (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Mick Jagger was right – you can’t always get what you want.

One of the dynamics that managers face is weighing off short-term objectives against longer term ones. This sometimes results in seemingly poor decisions being made.

Often, I get to hear people in organizations complain about the seemingly silly decisions that are made. It is so clear to them, that by investing $100,000, you can recover a $1m. They’ve done the cost benefit analysis, and the answer is clear. The only problem is that they haven’t figured whether there is $100,000 to spend in the first place.

Think of it like this: If you replace the windows in house with better insulated ones, install high efficiency furnaces and air conditioners, and put new insulation in your attic, you will undoubtedly save thousands over the lifetime of those renovations. However, you may not have the $25,000 required now to do those modifications. Further, you may not be sure you’ll be in the house long enough to recover the investment.

It is the same for organizations.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve seen lots of examples of corporate stupidity, too. My favorite one is the company that decreed in blood that all travel occurring within an operating division must be by surface, and that air travel was restricted to those going across operating divisions. This made a lot of sense in Northern California, where the decree was issued. It didn’t make a lot of sense in British Columbia (about twice the size of Texas, and full of mountains). It turns out to drive from one side of this division to another was a four or five day exercise. Surely a plane ticket would be cheaper? Nope – the policy stands. Truly stupid.

The dynamic of measuring the short term and long term costs and benefits is not easy. Leaders need to do the math and figure out the right thing to do. But sometimes, the right thing to do is deferred to what can be done.

You might not get what want, but rather “get what you need”. Thanks Mick.

How to do a Cost Benefit Analysis

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What is a Cost Benefit Analysis

It is a tool used to more objectively assess:
- the value of a solution or action
- the comparison between alternative solutions or courses of action
For our purposes, it does not include detailed financial analysis

When to conduct a Cost Benefit Analysis

To determine feasibility of a solution or course of action
To compare alternative solutions or courses of action
When you are justifying a course of action
When you are requesting additional resources for something

How to do a Cost Benefit Analysis

Determine the Costs
Calculate the Benefits
Compare Alternatives
Report and Plan Action

Determine the Costs

You should first check to see if any analysis has already been done on your project or idea. Perhaps there has already been some detailed costing work done. If not, you will need to collect the cost numbers.
List out costs of your solution or course of action:
- Initial or capital costs
- Ongoing costs – what are the costs in the coming months or years?
- Labor costs – how much time will your idea take from people?
- Contractor costs – Are there external labor costs?
- Supply or input costs
- Non-monetary costs – what is the impact on safety, morale, reputation and other less tangible things. You may not be able to assess a number to these things, but you should at least list them for consideration.

Calculate Benefits

The next step in the Cost Benefit Analysis is to estimate the benefits on all the same dimensions as you did for costs:

Dollar value of benefits:
- Time (labor) saved
- Supply (input) savings
- Energy savings
Non-monetary benefits:
- Safety, environmental
- Reputational
- Morale, turnover
- Quality

You should consider the immediate, yearly, and ongoing benefits in your Cost Benefit Analysis.

Compare Alternatives

You now need to compare the costs and benefits from each of your alternatives. If you only have one alternative, you are still comparing your option with the status quo.

Subtract costs from benefits for each alternative
First compare against doing nothing
Compare each alternative with each other
Take non-monetary into consideration

Below is a comparison table for a simple Cost Benefit Analysis. In the last 4 rows, a dollar figure may be difficult to quantify, so you can put a description of the cost or benefit in each of these areas:

	*Status Quo*	*Option 1*	*Option 2*
Initial Costs
Ongoing Costs
Time Savings
Supply Savings
Energy Savings
Safety
Environmental
Reputational
Morale

Report and Plan Action for your Cost Benefit Analysis

Make a recommendation based on your Cost Benefit Analysis
Put together a brief plan of action for your recommendation.
Don’t forget about other influencing conditions. Sometimes, you may have a compelling argument that still needs to be deferred for other reasons, such as:
- Cash flow
- Availability of resources
- Competing priorities

3 Things to Remember About How to do a Cost Benefit Analysis:

Non-monetary conditions may have a considerable influence. Safety considerations, for example, may trump all other criteria in determining action
The time-value of money must not be underestimated. Many people forget that capital has a cost, and if your idea ties up dollars there is a direct cost to this.
If it gets complicated, more detailed financial analysis may be more appropriate. You may need to seek out a finance individual in your organization to assist with your analysis.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about How to do a Cost Benefit Analysis (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

How to Set Goals and Objectives

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Below we discuss the following aspects of How to Set Goals and Objectives:

Goals and Objectives in the larger context of Performance Management
Why managers should bother with Goals and Objectives
Three Steps on how to Set Goals and Objectives

How to Set Goals and Objectives in the Larger Context of Managing Performance:

Every organization should have an infrastructure for managing employee performance. Below is a simple model that shows how to Set Goals and Objectives in a broader context:

Goals Versus Objectives:

There are many different definitions of “Goals” and “Objectives”. Here is how we delineate the two:

Goals are higher level than objectives
Goals have longer time frames than objectives
Objectives are more specific than goals
Several objectives may contribute toward a single goal.

Why Bother to Set Goals and Objectives

To Set Goals and Objectives closes the gap between Strategy and Execution. Goals and objectives are needed to translate high-level strategies into more manageable behaviours that need to occur on a daily basis.
Without well-written goals and objectives, evaluating performance becomes unnecessarily more difficult. Goals and objectives translate into tangible actions that are observable and often measureable.
Setting Goals and Objectives drives focus and alignment through the organization. When Goals and Objectives are clear, and cascade through an organization, alignment is assured.
By setting Goals and Objectives, you help define and drive performance.
Goals and Objectives clarify the employee’s priorities and allow them to allocate their time and resources effectively.

Cascading Goals and Objectives

When you set Goals and Objectives, you need to ensure alignment between different levels of the organization. Starting at the most basic functions of a company, the Goals and Objectives must contribute or “roll up” to the Goals and Objectives of the next level up in the organization. In situations where there are many layers, this alignment must be carried on until the very highest level of the organization.

Three Steps to Set Goals and Objectives:

Align the organization’s and team goals. Regardless of where you are in an organization’s hierarchy, you need to look above you, and ensure that you understand those higher-level goals, and ensure your goals will contribute to those.
Draft your goals and objectives. After you’ve looked up the hierarchy, sit down with your team and draft your team objectives, and personal goals and objectives accordingly.
Meet to discuss and finalize. You need to meet with your boss to discuss and finalize your Goals and Objectives. You then need to meet with your team to ensure that all Goals and Objectives are fully aligned.

Drafting Clear Goals and Objectives

The SMART acronym is instructional when refining Goals and Objectives:

Specific: Well written Goals and Objectives state a clear end result. The objective names the end result, output or intent, so there is no room for misinterpretation. When writing Goals and Objectives, use concise verbs, such as:
- “to establish,”
- “to increase,”
- “to reduce”
Measurable:Your Goals and Objectives must be quantifiable in some way. Some general categories and examples associated with measuring objectives include:
- Quantity number of units produced, items processed, calls taken, contacts made, etc.
- Quality number of specs met, percentage error rates, percent waste rates, number of complaints received, accuracy of reports, etc.
- Cost dollars spent, percentage within budget, dollars spent on overtime, etc.
- Time in Use percentage of target dates met, number of deadlines met, number of units shipped on time, etc.
Attainable: there must be a reasonable chance that the objective can be achieved; some people suggest an 80% probability is effective as a motivator. If you set Goals and Objectives that are too much of a stretch, people won’t take them seriously.
Relevant: Goals and Objectives must be related directly to the individual’s sphere of influence and key job accountabilities.
Timebound: states a time frame, target dates, and/or milestones during the year that are expected to be met.

If you struggle with writing performance objectives, here is a formula to get you started:

I will ( action )
so that ( outcome ).
by ( date )

For example:

I will work with my team to develop performance objectives so that 100% of my direct reports will have documented objectives by January 31.

3 Things to Remember About How to Set Goals and Objectives:

Involve your team when establishing Goals and Objectives. These should not be done in isolation.
Meet often to discuss progress. Do not allow the setting of Goals and Objectives to become an academic exercise that is visited only once per year.
Include Business/Operational and Leadership objectives. Most people establish their business or operational Goals and Objectives, and fail to define Leadership ones. If you are a leader of other people you need to set Goals and Objectives that pertain to that function. For example:

a) The number and quality of one on one meetings

b) % compliance on performance appraisals

c) measure of employee development activity

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about How to Set Goals and Objectives (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Laundry Lists and Diffused Focus

The fun part about our job is being exposed to a number of different industries and organizations. One of my favorite things to say is, “I’ve worked in Nuclear Power Stations, and in grocery stores, and 90% of the management issues are the same.” I usually get significant pushback from the Nuclear Engineers on this one, but it’s true.

Often the response I get from this statement is a question about the most common thread that weaves organizations and their performance together. The answer, quite simply, is “Focus”. The great performing organizations define and continually refine the limited number of things they need to do well, and then execute those things.

The reason people lose focus is because they get so busy managing tasks, they forget to look up every now and then and make sure they are doing the right things. Or, as I like to say, “They are so busy doing their jobs, they forget to do their jobs.”

As a busy manager, the next time you feel more overwhelmed with work than the bartender on the Kennedy Compound, spend a couple of minutes to review what your top 3 to 7 objectives for the year are. What are you doing to achieve those objectives this week? Better yet, review your top objectives every day before you start diving into tasks.

If you find yourself involved in meetings and activities that have nothing to do with those 3 to 7 objectives, then you need to question what you’re doing. Worse yet, if find yourself with 25 or 30 objectives, you need to go back to drawing board, and transform your laundry list into a more manageable, critical action list.

Achieving focus is conceptually very easy, but requires a lot of discipline to do well.

Bias for Action, Absence of Thinking

“A bias for action” – this has become a buzz-phrase I’ve noticed lately, and it makes my skin crawl the same way as when some one uses the word “irregardless”. This is the curse of several years of studying English at University.

I’ll be the first guy to encourage people to actually get things done, but if I’m going to have a bias for something, I’d prefer it be a bias for thinking. Simply put, any action you take that is not preceded by some thinking is a waste of time that will ultimately cost you much more time in the long run.

In many situations, the thinking involved need be brief. Unless you’re planning a moon landing, the amount of time writing and refining plans quickly hits diminishing returns. To spend even a few minutes thinking about something, and perhaps handwriting one page on what you are trying to achieve, the benefits, risks, and involvement required from others will save you a huge amount of time in the long run.

Here are some of my favorite business moments that demonstrated a bias for action, and an absence of thinking:

New Coke: Turns out people liked the old coke better, and the company spent millions to undo their action

Moving Jay Leno from the Tonight Show: NBC had a problem as to what to do with Conan O’Brien, but didn’t think too long about any of these decisions. Oh well… what’s $40 million between friends?

Ford Motor Company and the Pinto: It seems it was cheaper to pay wrongful death suits than it was to recall the exploding Pinto. Apparently the guys running Ford at the time had the Wizard of Oz trifecta: No brains, no heart, no courage.

US IRS and tax evaders: The US Revenue Service has decided recently to go after tax evaders in Canada and the UK. Newsflash: people looking to evade taxes don’t move to higher tax jurisdictions that have comprehensive tax treaties with the United States. If any thought had been put into this, they would realize the housewife who moved to Canada as a child probably isn’t as promising a source of revenue as the corporate executive that moved to Grand Cayman.

Think, then act. You’d be surprised how well it works.

Overload at Work

Fast Track to Alignment: Ignore Head Office

Business Alignment Strategies

Changing the Paradigm of BS

Describing Your Business: The Elevator Speech

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

How to do a Cost Benefit Analysis

How to Set Goals and Objectives

Laundry Lists and Diffused Focus

Bias for Action, Absence of Thinking

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