15 Strategies for Personal Management

1. Always be willing to learn something that makes you more interesting or productive

2. Focus on self-empowerment as a responsible action

3. Accept responsibility only if you are willing to be held accountable

4. Don’t let stress ruin a good environment or relationship

5. Be enthusiastic and exhibit positude on a daily basis

6. Take care of your mental and physical health

7. Demonstrate a good work ethic at all times

8. Integrate your values and beliefs with your business goals

9. Use trust to build relationships and be respectful

10. Voice your opinion when needed but be a better listener

11. Focus on priorities in all areas of your life
12. Don’t confuse efficiency with effectiveness…know the difference

13. Use your emotional intelligence to exhibit self-discipline

14. Strive to improve your performance daily in all areas of your life

15. Realize that success is a journey that continues throughout life

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Women in Leadership; It's a touchy subject

Women in leadership; it’s a touchy subject, or is it? Maybe for the females it is. Women face multi-dimensional obstacles in today’s workplace. Women have been overcoming challenges since the beginning. Although there have been quite a few women in high leadership roles, it hasn’t changed the day to day for women. For them it’s a delicate balancing act.

A study called “Holding Women Back” surveyed 10,000 leaders. It states that as both men and women rose through the ranks, the gap widened between the genders in involvement in leadership development programs. At the first level of management, the study found, 19% of men and 15% of women were in high-potential programs. By the time they reached the top executive level, 39% of men compared to 26% of women were considered high-potentials. A lot of the recommendations tend to be unconscious, i.e. “Mark is like me, he’ll be a good candidate.”

Women are expected to combine leadership with compassion, rightly so. I’m sure their employee’s mothers were compassionate while growing up. Women must conform to two very conflicting sets of expectations, too pushy, too soft, too accommodating, too sexless, and too sexy. With this narrow defined set of expectations, how are women supposed to react and how are they to act while in a leadership position?

“Holding Women Back” study says “We’re recommending formal programs…Does the program have fairness and common standards? Do we have ways to evaluate who’s in the program? Once you do [this], you start to see the gender differences disappear.”

They also stated that women need to make their career aspirations known to managers and observe how others get opportunities and promotions, reaching out for similar chances rather than waiting to be approached by management.

As a woman in leadership, or a woman in her early career, she must voice her career needs and wants. Push past the obstacles holding her back and learn to soften her image while maintaining authority, determination, and competency. She must learn strategies for giving and receiving feedback and set clear goals.

Productivity Depends on Management

News Flash: The Labor Department reported that productivity declined at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

It is all over the news that worker productivity dropped this spring for the first time in more than a year. Some people believe that this should be an indicator for companies to step up their hiring if they hope to grow in this economic downturn.

I do not find that many companies are taking the appropriate measures to ramp up their hiring practices. Most companies are still depending on doing more with less and the stress of that philosophy is starting to take its toll on management and other key employees. It is more important than ever that management has a complete knowledge of the work itself, exhibits strong interpersonal responsiveness, continues to be creative, and provides useful ideas to be successful.

Most people today believe that being “busy” is the answer. That the more tasks we do right will produce the desired outcome. Management needs to realize that efficiency does not necessarily bring results. It is the effectiveness of the activities that everyone performs on a daily basis that is the key to success. It's not the number of hours you work, but the results of your activities at the end of the day.

Some techniques that management can use to improve employee productivity may include the following:
• Improve the effectiveness of your supply chain
• Improve the pattern of workflow; less duplication of efforts
• Increase quality by focusing on the reduction of error rates to avoid reworks
• Setting up a schedule to reduce or eliminate down time
• Make sure everyone is performing only value-added work
• Improve morale (read article: 9 Ways to Boost Morale)
• Provide an effective development process to improve productivity
• Understand the need for everyone to reach their potential and be goal-oriented.

Most management today has not been taught how to be more effective. If you are not going to ramp up your hiring, then you better make you workers more effective first and foremost. If everyone improves their performance and productivity while lowering their stress, you will reach your company goals.

Nine Tactics to Boost Employee Morale

One of a manager's most important jobs is to keep spirits up in the workplace. With stress levels at an all time high, this isn't always easy to do. However, there are some strategies you can use that will get the job done - - without hurting your budget!

1. Sponsor a "Noon Movie". Once a week, depending on employee schedules, set up a DVD in the lunchroom and show a funny movie during lunch. If time is limited, show reruns of Seinfield, Frazier, or other situation comedies.
   
2. Set up a "Humor Corner". Designate one section of the office as the place for humor and encourage employees to post cartoons, jokes, or other funny material.
   
3. Get out of the Office! Whenever possible, hold meetings outside the office - at the coffee show down the street or at a local restaurant. If weather premits, don't be afraid to hold meetings outside from time to time.
   
4. Liven up your memos. Buy a book of one liners, and include a joke at the bottom of your memos.
   
5. Run a "Guess the Baby" contest. Ask the staff to bring in baby photos and post them on the wall. Award a free lunch to the employee who can guess who's who.
   
6. Have "Late Day Mondays". If possible, once a month allow your employees to arrive an hour late on Monday morning - or leave an hour early on a Friday.
   
7. Take pictures! Every office has an aspiring photographer. Ask that person to take candid shots of employees, and add them to the "Humor Corner".
   
8. Play with the dress code. If your culture allows it, hold an "Ugly Sweater", "Ugly Tie", or "Ugly Pants" day. Award prizes for the winners.
   
9. Bring your smile to work. You'll be surprised at the difference it makes. If the manager consistenly has an upbeat attitude, that staff will as well.

** from The Manager's Intelligence Report

Is Management Limited Their Employees?

Self-Management

Following my reading of an adaption from Making It Work by David Allen, I certainly was in agreement with the author that the two key ingredients for self-management are control and perspective. The author believed that if you can maintain a sufficient level in each, your world will be in order and you will be focused exactly as you should be.

Others believe that individuals who need change are more likely to succeed if they are in control of the change process. Getting people to learn and apply the appropriate principles is not very easy. Hence, to most, this self managed change is not an easy thing to do. Where do you start on such a task?

1 - First exhibit awareness of what changes are needed. Ask yourself, “What behaviors and attitudes am I using today that are prohibiting me from moving forward?” Once the inhibitive behaviors or actions are identified, then a plan must be developed to enable us to use new solutions or behaviors that will reflect our growth and development objectives. What does that mean? You must change your reactions, or habits to get a different result.

2 - For implementation to take place, we must translate our plan into goals that will bring us the desired change. This goal-orientation process is the most important component of self-management because it can be measured and the results are clearly defined. This allows us to be focused on the things that matter most, as I like to believe it is a contract with ourselves. This holds true for all areas in our life; not just work but home life as well.

3 - We also must have the right attitude because goal-orientation requires coaching and self-management. It is a model that is used by many professional coaches today. Positive attitude provides an overwhelming edge for our success. Our non-verbal communication, which is 60% of communication, is a direct reflection of our attitude. Our perspective on life will also certainly be reflected by our success in reaching our goals.

But are we ready for Self-Management? An article that appeared in the September 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review by James Haskett, stated that “Predominant reactions to notations of self-management explored in this month’s column could be described best by two words, “enthusiasm” and “skepticism’”. Many respondents felt that the concepts of self-management should be implemented in organizations while others felt that obstacles to their implementation was real, and that management itself was the main culprit. As managers, are we our worst enemy for not allowing people to become self-managers?

Employees need to focus on the skill-sets and competencies that will help them manage themselves better both in the workplace and at home. Every worker must be considered a leader and their initial leadership focus should be on self-management. Self-management is not only understanding what is needed to be more productive, but it is also asking “How do I become a goal-oriented individual and learn to control priorities?” and “Do I really practice self-empowerment or even know what it means?”

I would like to see everyone conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis on themselves and understand that personal management can dramatically improve both your productivity and performance. If we learn and initiate the skills for effective personal management, then we just may be ready to accept the principles of self-management and its related components in the workplace today.

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The Process for Employee Alignment and Achievement

Here are ten steps to take today and in the future to align your employees so they will positively effect your bottom line while achieving their goals.

1. Separate the strategic and tactical thinking processes

2. Define the business strategy in all areas of the business (Revenue, Operations, Personnel, and Financial)

3. Make everyone aware of the business strategy and plant the seed that will allow them to achieve those goals

4. Make sure clarity of the business strategy is established for all

5. Break the Strategic Business Plan down into goals by business unit, division and/or department (Eat the Elephant in small bites)

6. Develop a goal-orientation culture within the company

7. Formulate specific, time sensitive, prioritized goals that provide each employee with a clear sight to the strategy, department goals, and reflect upon their own roles and responsibilities.

8. Let the employee develop the metrics and reporting structure that will continue to provide clarity and measure achievement

9. Set process meetings to determine your success or failure with opportunity to recommend changes demonstrating their value in the process

10. Be satisfied that the overall business strategy must be changed to reflect the highly competitive and volatile marketplace.

Achieve Greatness - Each Employee has a Major Impact on the Bottom Line

Today I visited several companies of various sizes in a variety of industries and I would like to tell you that it is not a very bright picture for Strategically-Oriented Human Resource Professionals. The majority of executives continue to have an “accountant” attitude toward business. . .cut costs. . .cut expenses. . .cut people. . .more cuts.

I even heard of one CFO that feels people development is a waste of time and doesn’t have any understanding of the ramifications of almost 65% of his management team is retiring in less than 24 months! Forget succession planning; let’s just go with massive hiring and selection without talent development. Other HR Professionals that I visited today are now back to only performing a variety of administrative duties and no longer have a budget for people development or anything else for that matter. On my next to my last call, I visited with an HR professional whose executive management team anointed her the saver of the company. She was told that they wanted her to be part of the executive leadership team in the development of a new management team that would take the company to the next level. I cannot tell you how much fun it was to sit and listen to her plans and ideas for accomplishing her goal.

Upon arriving home, I became I read on an article titled, "Alignment Drives Employee Engagement and Productivity" available from Taleo Research. It points out that the HR role is key in driving the process and selecting the tools needed to achieve alignment. It also demonstrates that statistically most managers do not see HR as being up to the task. In the majority of companies I visited today, their managers felt that way as well.

The fact of the matter is HR cannot execute the strategy without the commitment of the front line managers. Most HR professionals would also agree that aligning talent to business, providing current job roles and responsibilities, and measuring performance creates an environment where the employee’s passion for the business can grow and drive the overall performance of their company.

Isn’t it time for the executives and cave dwellers to wake up? Numerous studies have proven that goal alignment and engagement improve productivity and company performance. When your employee is engaged, and aligned, each employee can have a major impact on the bottom line of a business.

Engagement improves productivity, creates top performers, and improves employee retention while alignment ties the business strategy to personal goals, improves engagement and promotes achievement. But we must be forward thinkers and align the two; it provides focus and a clear line of sight for all involved while decreasing lost productivity and increases revenue per employee. The impact of all of this lies in productivity and process improvement, risk reduction and organizational impacts.

So what’s left for us to do; train the management and employees to be better goal setters? It is believed that only 15% of all employees really think that their goals will help them achieve great things. An employee achieving great things will impact the bottom line and insure that the company is achieving great things. Your front line managers define the culture for achievement and the employee demonstrates that a results-oriented company will achieve greatness.