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Bob Geldof on Time Management

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This morning on Radio 4 they did a piece on the role of the internet in modern society.

Bob Geldof offered a wonderful piece of time management advice.  I understood him to say that that none of the companies that he was ‘involved with’ were allowed to receive e-mails before 2.00pm.  He went on to say that he ‘would like to think’ that this improved productivity.

I am sure it does.  The whole morning is available without e-mail distraction to do high value work.  This stops people easing their way into the day by ‘doing’ e-mails only to find half the day gone and they have got nothing (of real consequence) done.

I only download e-mails every three hours – a thought which horrifies most people.  But once they recognise that there really is no such thing as an urgent e-mail – and that I  enjoy the benefits of long periods at work un-interrupted by e-mail most start to see the point.

Another good reason for Bob’s ‘no e-mail till 2’ rule is that doing e-mail is a pretty low level activity.  Much of it can be done on auto-pilot – so do it after lunch – when we take a bit of a performance hit anyway.

Managing People With Passion

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My working life has been spent working with a wide variety of organisations. But they all have one thing in common. Each is trying to make the world a better place. Whether operating in the private, public or third sector they have all been about making things better.

People join these organisations because they:

  1. Want to make a positive difference in the world
  2. Develop their own potential and capacity in making this difference
  3. Want to provide food, warmth and shelter for themselves and their loved ones.

They want to belong in an organisation where they can grow, make a difference and earn a living.

They need respectful and nurturing management. The salary to them is important – but in the long run it is personal growth and making a difference that they really value. They need management that focuses on helping them to make their contribution.

Many of the organisations I have worked with have struggled in this area. People lose their sense of purpose and identity as they become consumed by delivering ‘the service’ or ‘the contract’. They become more technically proficient at what they do – but their optimism and belief slowly fades away and performance slowly degrades.

This process is driven by an orthodox approach to management that focuses on tasks and fails to engage with dreams and aspirations. The noble goals are transformed into routine. There is a famous story about the floor sweeper at NASA who proudly told visitors that he was working to help put men on the moon. Well, in many organisations this process of ennobling a job is completely reversed. People doing great work, contributing to great goals, become reduced to ‘marketing co-ordinators’, ‘database administrators’ or ‘account managers’. They get absorbed into management systems, balanced scorecards, customer service standards and the other paraphernalia of modern management and they lose sight of what they are all about.

Managing people with passion has to be done differently. It has to keep the sense of purpose ‘up front’.

It has to keep the passion burning.

Diversity and the Art of Delegation

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  • How do you get other people to do what needs to be done?
  • How do you make time and space in your diary to do the things that only you can do?
  • How do you manage to escape doing those aspects of the job that you don’t like or find hard?

Delegation of course.

But what if your team, the pool of people available to delegate to, is just like you?  Similar personalities and temperaments.  Similar preferences and skills.

If you fall into this trap then those things that you want to delegate – they are likely to want to delegate too.  The jobs that you hate – they will hate too.  delegation becomes a difficult, risky and painful process.

If on the other hand you have a diverse team with a wide variety of skills and preferences then it is likely that you will find someone to delegate to who will enjoy the new work.

By recruiting a team with diverse skills and preferences you will make delegation much more straightforward.

Hungry for It!

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This is a great post that I think says a lot about manager/employee relations in much of UK management.

Personal Assistants and secretaries marching in the streets to demand the opportunity to

  • unleash their potential at work;
  • make progress not coffee;
  • be recognised as ‘career girls not cover girls’ and as ‘office heroes’.

It captures what the Progressive Managers Network is all about – developing managers that provide these iopportunites all of the time toevery one on the team.

All power to their elbow!

Love, Hate and Indifference

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Stope Hate UK

For a while now I have used a Honda advert in my work with clients – the one with the fluffy bunnies and the dirty diesel engine that becomes clean and environmentally friendly.    It has a wonderfully catchy tune with the lyrics  ‘Hate something, change something, make something better…’

It helps people to understand that both love and hate provide the fuel for change; the energy, inspiration and motivation required to make something happen.  The power to make things better.   ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ are full of opportunity and potential.

It is indifference that is the problem.  Indifference never made anything happen.

Often the people that hate things the most are the ones that you need to talk with to make things better.  Passion fuels progress.  That is why I love hate – and encourage managers to love it too.  Find out what people hate – and help them to change it.

Today though I met an organisation based here  in Leeds called ‘Stop Hate UK’.  Their purpose is to stop hate crime, and their unique contribution is to make reporting of hate crime easier and to provide practical and relevant help to those who suffer it.  Wow!  No problem getting up in the morning to go and work on that!

In organisational life it is usually the object of hatred (the unethical practice, the flaky printer, the fussy customer) that provides the opportunity for change.  But perhaps there are times when it is the hater that provides the real opportunity for progress rather then the hated?

If you would like to know about the work of STOP HATE UK then just click on the graphic to visit their website.  And if you are a victim of a hate crime then give them a call.