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Archives for October 2007

Moving Office!

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unity.jpg

Been a quiet week on the blogging front – mainly because I have been moving to a new office.

Just waiting for the e-mails to start flowing again as my new ‘IP address propogates across the internet’!  Amazing how much you can get done with fewer e-mail distractions.

So the Progressive Managers Network and Realise Development now have new homes in the real world at Unit 35, Unity Business Centre, 26 Roundhay Rd, Leeds, LS7 1AB.

The office is small (but perfectly formed) and well equipped with whiteboards, flip charts, an inspirational library,  and good coffee.

So if you want to drop by for a conversation about how to improve management and leadership, or any other aspect of organisational development and performance improvement you would be very welcome.

Mike Chitty

0113 2167782

What Could a Management Makeover Do for You?

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Here is a ‘Management Makeover’ recipe to improve organisational culture and performance – fast.

  • Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of communication throughout the organisation. Do this through effective 121s, team meetings, project meetings and ‘skip level’ meetings. Train people to make these meetings REALLY work. Make sure that the communication regime works both ways – that managers listen as well as they talk.
  • Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of feedback in the organisation. Train everyone how to give, receive and act on feedback. Train managers how to escalate feedback if it is not acted on effectively. Once everyone knows how their performance is perceived, what is working well and what needs further development, they will start to develop – fast. Make feedback a part of every day work – not a quarterly event!
  • Train every manager to coach every member of their team, every week, to improve their performance. Use coaching to establish learning firmly in the workplace and focus it on providing a better service. A weekly coaching routine provides a great tempo to learning and performance improvement. Train managers to use coaching for performance improvement – helping good people to become great. However also equip them to coach under-performers – if necessary as part of a formal performance process.
  • Train managers to delegate prodigiously. Train them to use delegation as a tool to provide opportunities for those who are hungry to learn and develop their contribution to the organisation. Use delegation, supported by coaching, feedback and great communication to significantly increase the capacity of your organisation.

Communication, Feedback, Coaching and Delegation. Managers who do these four things consistently well stand head and shoulders above their peers. Their teams perform better and keep improving.

All four are relatively easy to learn – requiring more commitment, courage and discipline than skill. For most people a three hour training session on each gives them the basics. They then just need to practice and learn perhaps with some additional advice and support along the way. The challenge in implementing this ‘Management Make’ over is in developing a new set of management habits. And this takes, time, courage and discipline.

But don’t rush it. If this recipe is going to work managers need time to develop and put into practice what they have learned.

Start with better communication through 121s. As soon as 121s have bedded down, after 4-6 weeks introduce training on feedback. Let this have a month to bed in before developing coaching, and a further month before training in delegation.

Within 6 months you will have transformed the culture and performance of your organisation. And this Management Makeover will be much more than skin deep.

In Support of 121s

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Carmine Coyotes Slow Leadership blog is one of my favourites. In this post she describes with great eloquence the importance of ‘Right Relationships’ to effective leadership. Carmine writes:

Dealing with people takes time. You need time to get to know them, time to establish trust and respect, time to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and time to help them develop and grow. Perhaps the worst aspect of the frenetic management pace that’s becoming the norm is the way it deprives leaders of the time to spend with the people they’re charged with leading.

How do your colleagues, friends, and subordinates know that you’re interested in them? I mean truly interested in their welfare and progress, not just focused on them as useful to you in some way: shoulders to cry on or “worker bees” with a tough budget to meet in honey output.

 

The answer is simple: it’s the amount of quality time you spend with each one.

Absolutley!

For most managers it is not about spending more time with their team members. It is about focusing the time on them – the team member – rather than on the manager or the organsiation. It is about scheduling the time in advance rather than relying on impromptu meetings. It is about preparation and follow through.

Weekly, 30 minute, documented 121s.

From Good to Great Manager – Part 2

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Great managers make people feel good about their work.

They catch people doing something right and thank them for it far more often they catch them doing something wrong. Affirming feedback outnumbers adjusting feedback by about 5:1.

They spend time with their team members observing them working and providing plenty of feedback and praise based on what they see. This is very different to many managers roles that are explicitly designed to ‘manage by exception’. ie the manager only gets involved when something has not gone as planned.

Great managers, when presented with ideas listen carefully for the tiniest germ of potential. Seizing that germ, they talk it through – teasing it, tweezing it, rearranging it – until the team member produces something workable.

Most importantly great managers make sure that team members know that their work is important.  That it makes a difference.  That they contribute.