Five tips for improving your team's productivity

his post by John McKee originally appeared on August 9, 2010 at TechRepublic.com.
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“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
That comment was made by the great management guru, Peter F. Drucker. I shared it with a client a few weeks ago as we discussed his team’s performance and the differences between being efficient and being effective. The last is all about making a genuine difference to outcomes — something particularly important in these times when layoffs abound.

Keeping team members motivated and performing at the top of their game is especially difficult right now. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, or it seems as though the job just keeps getting harder, think how some of your team members are probably feeling. If they’re worried about their own job, paying bills, or the fate of a loved one, it’s unlikely they are doing their best work. That reduced effectiveness could, ironically, create a worse situation for them if it results in fewer jobs or reduced pay.

It’s to the benefit of all concerned that you help them keep working at full steam. Here are a few best practices we’ve seen used successfully by strong leaders across a wide swath of industries and organizations. If you or your team could use some new approaches, I suggest you add some of these to your own management toolbox:

Note: These tips are based on an entry in our IT Leadership blog.

1: Lead by example

You send messages to your team members with every action and statement. If you’re seen to be giving extra, it will inspire and energize others to do the same. The same holds true for the opposite: Showing fear or frustration will only fuel similar results within the team.

2: Focus on communicating objectives rather than defining roles

With fewer human resources, now’s the time to reassess your key deliverables. Which of them make an immediate impact and what can be punted for now? Engage as many of the team as possible on the most important goals; even if that move takes them outside their old job definitions.

3: Maintain a sense of urgency

Keep goals, both individual and team, front and center to ensure focus. Broadcast and talk about results and achievements. Especially if you’ve had to reduce headcount, you want each individual performing at optimal levels. Note I say “optimal” and not “maximum.” The former is good management practice; the latter results in burnout and negativity.

4: Celebrate individual contributions

Sports teams are clear about the fact that certain players make a bigger difference, so they recognize those people appropriately. For high performers, hearing only about the “team’s performance” can actually demotivate them and cause them to slow down to the “norm.”

5: Provide guidelines to reduce uncertainty

Trusting your team to do the right thing is well and good; but in uncertain times, even your best team members can make improper decisions. Help them with frequent reviews of goals, new or successful past approaches, and preferred outcomes during regular team meetings.

Ok work hard, but work on the right thing!

I came upon a link shared by a Facebook buddy, about why working hard is overrated. Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr, argues that working hard is not really the magic thing that leads to great inventions or successful outcomes. She says working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard. She continues:

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

But just how do we know we're working on the right thing? In her followup post, Caterina says the only way to gauge that is instinct, gut feel, or the spine-tingling sensation you feel when you encounter a great work of literature, as Nabokov (of Lolita fame) says. Getting the right thing generally requires exploring lots of ideas, fleshing out a few, ruminating on them, and throwing almost all of them out. She quotes Steve Jobs, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the many things we haven't done as the things we have done."

The Age of Unreason

"George Bernard Shaw once observed that all progress depends on the unreasonable man. His argument was that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; therefore for any change of consequence we must look to the unreasonable man.

While in Shaw's day, perhaps, most men were reasonable, we are now entering an Age of Unreason, when the future, in so many areas, is there to be shaped, by us and for us—a time when the only prediction that will hold true is that no predictions will hold true; a time, therefore, for bold imaginings in private life as well as public, for thinking the unlikely and doing the unreasonable."

- Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason
# ISBN-10: 0875842461
# ISBN-13: 978-0875842462

The recipe for a successful new systems installation

My experience in installing information systems brought me to many places. I've installed systems to rural barangays, mid-level bureaus, and high level administrators. Sometimes not all users readily embrace change. More often it is the younger set that are more willing to absorb new things.

Man got paid for 5 years without working a single day

An Illinois man got US$469,000 in paychecks without working for a single day. Anthony Armatys of Palatine, Illinois, pleaded guilty Monday on one count of theft. He accepted a job with Avaya Inc. in September 2002, but later changed his mind. The company's computer system did not remove his name from the payroll. Paychecks were deposited into his bank account until February 2007, when Avaya auditors discovered the mistake.

Could this ever happen in the Philippine government sector? With contractualization of labor, employees are forced to take 6-months contracts, subject to renewal. But there are indeed 15-30 employees, those who show up only on paydays. There are many of these employees especially in the local government sector. In general the government workforce cannot deny that many get paid without working. All they have to do is show up. That is called management.

No Boss Envy in the Office - Survey

Today is Boss Day in the U.S. Results of an online study conducted last week show that a majority of U.S. workers do not think their bosses are honest, and one in four would fire their boss if they could and only four in ten workers would take their bosses' jobs if offered.

The survey finds most American workers happy not to be in charge, recognizing the increasingly challenging job American bosses are facing today due to heightened on-the-job pressures resulting from both economic and business turmoil.

65% would not change anything about their relationship with their bosses showing that strides have been made in improving the manager-employee relationship. However, a quarter of employees say that they do not trust that their boss has been honest about their job security.

Here are some key findings in employee perception of bosses:
- Satisfaction still depends on boss/employee relationship: Almost all workers (89%) still think their relationship with their boss is more important or as important to their job satisfaction.
- Accessibility unchanged: 87% of workers think their boss is just as accessible or more accessible as they were pre-recession.
- Respect has only marginally increased: Only 14% of workers have more respect for what their boss does everyday since the recession began.
- Performance reviews are still in place: 87% of workers think their boss has the same amount of or more focus on the performance review process as they did pre-recession.

Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer, Adecco Group North America said, "Good or bad economy, how employees feel about their work-life is very much dependent on their relationship with their boss. What we're hearing from the thousands of American workers we partner with everyday is that the world of work is more challenging than ever before and constantly changing. Increasingly difficult jobs require impactful managers who lead by example and create the best possible environment for their staff."

Her company offers the following tips for bosses looking to strengthen their relationship with their workers:
- Encourage open dialogue: Start or continue an open forum with employees where they can bring issues to the table and have an honest discussion about their concerns.
- Exhibit loyalty: Acts of loyalty may occur every day but many go unnoticed by employees. Learn to delicately communicate how loyal you are to key employees and how earning their trust is important. Earn employee trust by openly communicating both good and bad news and making every attempt not to surprise any employee.
- Improve morale: Company morale goes hand-in-hand with motivation. Motivate staff through contests, rewards and recognition of top work. Also conduct team-building exercises with staff to build stronger working relationships around the office.
- Communicate opportunities: Motivation also comes when an employee recognizes there are opportunities beyond their day-to-day job within a certain company. Be sure to communicate how the company can continue to help employees grow through special assignments, projects or learning opportunities.

In the Philippine scene, I would say employees also feel the same way as their American counterparts. The tips offered by Kenny could also be used by the Filipino bosses.

The Ant

From an email. Click on play to advance slides manually.

Ant - Management Lesson

The Ant
A Fable...
Or
May be not....

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately.

She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision.

He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor!

So he recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports.

The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system.

He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and …

… he  recruited a spider, who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyze trends, so that he could use them for presentations at Board meetings.

So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and …

… recruited a fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time…!

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked.

The position was given to the cicada, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.

The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, who he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimization Plan …

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset …

It was at that time that the cicada convinced the boss, the lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment.

Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before.

So he recruited the owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.

The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded: “The department is overstaffed …”

Guess who the lion fires first?

The ant, of course, because she “showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude".

You must have seen so many ants and you may be one among them

NB:
The characters in this fable are fictitious; any resemblance to real people or  facts within the Corporation is pure coincidence…

The end
Adapted from Portuguese by PR. Obrigado Mário.

Autonomy + Mastery + Purpose = Real Change

The above video shows Dan Pink talking about motivation and rewards at the TED conference. He argues that the traditional carrot-and-stick approach is only suitable for defined tasks with a clear set of rules to follow. However, rewards do not work for tasks that require any kind of thinking.

He says that for real change to occur employees need to have a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives; mastery refers to the desire to get better at something that matters; and purpose is the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

"...There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are the natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter...

"...The science confirms what we know in our hearts. So, if we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does, If we bring our motivation, notions of motivation into the 21st century, if we get past this lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks, we can strengthen our businesses, ... and maybe, maybe, maybe we can change the world."

Just do it.

The passivity and incompetence in Philippine bureaucracy can be partly traced to its segurista attitude. The tendency of upper management to be aristocratic and dictatorial together with their underlings' sipsip ways (unhealthy managing up) likewise lead to the lethargy. Many are unwilling to take initiative outside of what upper management hints, wary of their bosses' capacity to hold grudges.

So risk-aversion is ever the order of the day. Maybe the workforce should revisit the Grace Hopper quotations "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" and "A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for."

We need to remember that "winners take imperfect action while losers are still perfecting the plan" (Gina Graves).  Or as the commercial says "Just do it".

Signs of incompetent managers

Incompetence - When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can do.

.o0O0o..o0O0o..o0O0o.

There is an article by Margaret Heffernan for FastCompany.com which lists the traits of incompetent managers. Her list includes:

Bias against action: There are always plenty of reasons not to take a decision, reasons to wait for more information, more options, more opinions. But real leaders display a consistent bias for action. People who don’t make mistakes generally don’t make anything. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy argued that a good decision today is worth far more than a perfect decision next month. Beware prevaricators.

Secrecy: "We can’t tell the staff," is something I hear managers say repeatedly. They defend this position with the argument that staff will be distracted, confused or simply unable to comprehend what is happening in the business. If you treat employees like children, they will behave that way -- which means trouble. If you treat them like adults, they may just respond likewise. Very few matters in business must remain confidential and good managers can identify those easily. The lover of secrecy has trouble being honest and is afraid of letting peers have the information they need to challenge him. He would rather defend his position than advance the mission. Secrets make companies political, anxious and full of distrust.

Over-sensitivity: "I know she’s always late, but if I raise the subject, she’ll be hurt." An inability to be direct and honest with staff is a critical warning sign. Can your manager see a problem, address it headlong and move on? If not, problems won’t get resolved, they’ll grow. When managers say staff is too sensitive, they are usually describing themselves. Wilting violets don’t make great leaders. Weed them out. Interestingly, secrecy and over-sensitivity almost always travel together. They are a bias against honesty.

Love of procedure: Managers who cleave to the rule book, to points of order and who refer to colleagues by their titles have forgotten that rules and processes exist to expedite business, not ritualize it. Love of procedure often masks a fatal inability to prioritize -- a tendency to polish the silver while the house is burning.

Focus on small tasks: Another senior salesperson I hired always produced the most perfect charts, forecasts and spreadsheets. She was always on time, her data completely up-to-date. She would always volunteer for projects in which she had no core expertise -- marketing plans, financial forecasts, meetings with bank managers, the office move. It was all displacement activity to hide the fact that she could not do her real job.

Addiction to consultants: A common -- but expensive -- way to put off making decisions is to hire consultants who can recommend several alternatives. While they’re figuring these out, managers don’t have to do anything. And when the consultant’s choices are presented, the ensuing debates can often absorb hours, days, months. Meanwhile, your organization is poorer but it isn’t any smarter. When the consultant leaves, he takes your money and his increased expertise out the door with him.

Long hours: In my experience, bad managers work very long hours. They think this is a brand of heroism but it is probably the single biggest hallmark of incompetence. To work effectively, you must prioritize and you must pace yourself. The manager who boasts of late nights, early mornings and no time off cannot manage himself so you’d better not let him manage anyone else.

Five mistakes managers make most often

My guest blog, from TechRepublic:

Author: Toni Bowers
Some management mistakes are so common that you can actually compile them into a list. If you’re a manager struggling to find out why your team is dysfunctional, take a look at the behaviors in this list and see if any look familiar.

1. Not communicating with the team. I know, I know, you’ve seen the advice for communicating so often you want to smack someone. I want to smack myself for saying it so often. But you know what? Unless you’re on the front line heading into a military battle, you have to take time to communicate with your team members. You don’t have to pass on every shred of information you’ve gotten from upper management on a new initiative, but you have to give them enough information to know why they’re being asked to do what they’re being asked to do. The more information your team members have, the more ownership they’ll feel in the process, and the better they’ll perform.
2. Continually focusing on the negative. Thinking in negative terms is a common result from working in a reactive environment, which IT tends to be. In that environment, IT spends most of its time keeping the negative to a minimum with goals such as decreasing network downtime or putting out fires. A good leader has to make an effort to recognize the positive. (How about mentioning increased uptime?) Recognize your people for the forward progress they make and not just for their efforts to keep things from getting worse.
3. Changing policy due to one person. The term “team” makes some managers think they have to treat everyone the same way. This is true in many cases, but if one person has a performance issue, don’t take across-the-board measures to correct it just because you’re afraid of confronting that one team member. If one team member is failing to complete some duties in a timely manner, don’t introduce a policy forcing the whole team to submit weekly progress reports. Deal only with the one with the issues.
4. Not understanding the needs and concerns of your team. Some IT leaders find it virtually impossible to tell their bosses that something can’t be done. The team’s bandwidth or overall state of mind takes a backseat to real or imagined glory of being the guy who “gets things done.” Good managers don’t over-promise on their team’s behalf.
5. Never admitting you’re wrong or never taking responsibility. There’s risk involved in being a manager of a team. And that risk is, if your team fails at something, you should and will be the one held accountable. It doesn’t matter if one team member screwed something up; your job was to manage the overall process of all the team members, and you didn’t do it. So suck it up and own up to that. On a related note, if one of your actions caused a kink in a project, admit it. It’s ironic but not owning up to a problem damages your credibility with your team more than simply saying, “I was wrong.”

Dealing with the insecurely paranoid

An old friend is still having some problems with his supervisors. Based on his description of his bosses, I say that they are an insecure bunch bordering on paranoia. I surfed the web for cases similar to his and this is what I sent him:

This is from the CareerKnowHow website:

Few Things are More Destructive Than an Insecure Boss
by Ramon Greenwood
Few things are more destructive to a career than a boss who is insecure. Unfortunately, it is a near certainty that most people will encounter one or more such persons along the way.
"The actions of an insecure boss will eventually create an insecure organization, riddled with anxiety and indecision," says Ramon Greenwood, senior career counselor at Common Sense At Work.com. "People will spend more time looking over their shoulders than looking ahead. Good defenses become more important than effective offenses."
Seven Traits Of An Insecure Boss
You will know your boss is suffering from an insecurity complex when he or she is engaging in behavior highlighted by these seven such traits:
1. The boss insists on absolute control over everything in the department. He rules with an iron hand, refusing to delegate any real authority. He doesn't trust anyone. He has few allies. Those allies he does enlist are formed into a tight little clique strongly obligated to his authority and dependent on it. They live an uncertain life on a short leash.
2. The boss constantly interferes in the work of his staff. Second guesses are the order of the day.
3. He constantly defends his position. Every question or hint of criticism is treated as a challenge to his worth and authority. He doubts he has the respect of his associates. Those who exhibit a mind of their own are under constant attack.
4. The insecure boss is most often an absolute perfectionist. He will climb the wall when you make a mistake. But look out. When he fouls up, he will blame it on someone else. He has to be right every time.
5. He will resist making decisions. This means endless studies and return trips to the drawing boards.
6. He will frequently remind you who is boss.
7. He finds it next to impossible to laugh at himself, but he is quick to laugh at others.
Seven Actions You Can Take
There are no certain quick fixes, but there are seven steps that will help mitigate the situation and advance your own interests. Actually, insecure bosses can offer opportunities.
1. Be certain you are not contributing to your superior's low self-esteem. Do everything you can to reassure him of your respect for his position and your commitment to helping him do his job.
2. Shore him up at every opportunity. Learn where he feels most insecure--where his hot buttons are--and make a special effort to be
helpful in these areas.
3. When you have to challenge him, and surely you will from time to time, be certain to do it in a positive way. Don't question his authority. Never challenge or criticize the boss in the presence of others.
4. Never go around your insecure boss to deal directly with his boss without explicit approval. Make sure he realizes that you clearly understand the hierarchical relationships. You don't want to become an endangered species because you are seen as questioning his judgement and appealing to higher authorities.
5. Always be sure he gets more than his fair share of credit for your good work. Stay one step behind him when the limelight shines.
6. Find some of his good points and acknowledge them, publicly as well as privately. Remember, your boss may be a pain in the neck to work with, but surely he must have some redeeming features worthy of compliments.
7. Think of your own insecurities and what helps you deal with them. Apply what you learn from this analysis to dealing with your insecure boss.

The difference between leader and manager

Abraham Zaleznik wrote in an article from the Harvard Business Review in 1977:
"The difference between managers and leaders, he wrote, lies in the conceptions they hold, deep in the psyches, of chaos and order. Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly - sometimes before they fully understand a problem’s significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully in this way, Zalenznik argued, business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists and other creative thinkers than they do with managers. Organizations need both managers and leaders to succeed, but developing both requires a reduced focus on logic and strategic exercises in favour of an environment where creativity and imagination are permitted to flourish."

Warren Bennis, in his book "On Becoming a Leader", writes what he considers the differences between managers and leaders:

-The manager administers; the leader innovates.
-The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
-The manager maintains; the leader develops.
-The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
-The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
-The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
-The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
-The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
-The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon. The manager imitates; the leader originates.
-The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
-The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
-The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

I showed my friend an article on Bennis' book and we both agree that work involving developmental, creative processes need leaders; while work that go by set standard procedures require more management. My friend is now a bit enlightened though he still wonders how their management can steer their projects full steam ahead from their drifting position.

Management leadership

I have a friend who has resolved not to call the attention of his boss on anything because it always either meets inaction or worse he gets blamed for it. He thinks his bosses are too concerned with processes and control, (purposely or unwittingly) failing to provide project directions. That's why, my friend concludes, their projects never go far from the planning stages. To my mind, my friend's managers fail as a leader. Clearly there's a difference between leading and managing.

Gen. Colin Powell, in a leadership primer, said that "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." Here's the primer.

Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer

1. Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
2. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
3. Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
4. Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
5. Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.
6. You don't know what you can get away with until you try.
7. Keep looking below surface appearances. Don't shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.
8. Organization doesn't really accomplish anything. Plans don't accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
9. Organization charts and hence titles count for next to nothing.
10. Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
11. Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission.
12. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
13. Powell's Rules for Picking People" - Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.
14. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
15. Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired." Part II: "Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
16. The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
17. Have fun in your command. Don't always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it. Spend time with your families. Corollary: Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
18. Command is lonely.