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Friday, June 26, 2009 04:22 PM
Six steps to an empty inbox
With summer comes vacation. After vacation comes that grit-your-teeth moment: Your return to overflowing email. Productivity expert Kelly Forrister has advice for digging out, from The David Allen Company blog:
1. Extra time
You can’t handle a week or two weeks of e-mail in the same time that you handle a day’s. So give yourself a comfortable cushion of extra time on the morning back to attack the pile.
2. Delete
Look through the e-mails for ones you can immediately delete, studying the sender and subject line. A huge number will be spam or something akin to it. On the first day back to work, “nice to reads” that you might ordinarily give some attention to are almost certainly deletes.
3. Do
If you can deal with an e-mail in two minutes or less, handle it. Those will generally be quick reads that you can then delete, file or briefly respond to. Often you can tell those by the subject line and sender, so look for those after the ones you delete.
4. Delegate
If an e-mail can be handled by someone else, delegate it. However, that will generally require some time to carefully read the note and consider whether to hand it off, as well as what guidance or context you need to offer. Make sure to track those handoffs in a list of what you are expecting from others so you don’t forget to follow up.
5. Defer
The rest will take more time, and often require you to sort through the conversational threads that occurred while you were gone. Move them to an appropriate e-mail folder, capturing the next action you will take for each and writing that on a list. You may prefer to answer some of these e-mails immediately, but most can wait for later in the day or week.
6. Celebrate
Your inbox should now be at zero.
Link to this postFriday, June 26, 2009 04:26 PM
Twenty questions
Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson publishers, was recently interviewed about leadership by Michael Smith, a pastor with ClearView Church. The questions were so intelligent he shared them on his blog. They may be worth asking yourself:
1. Can you name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader? Maybe someone who has been a mentor to you? Why and how did this person affect your life?
2. What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization?
3. As an organization gets larger, there can be a tendency for the “institution” to dampen the “inspiration.” How do you keep this from happening?
4. How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization?
5. Where do the great ideas come from in your organization?
6. Which is most important to your organization – mission, core values or vision?
7. How do you or other leaders in your organization communicate the “core values”?
8. How do you encourage others in your organization to communicate the “core values”?
9. Do you set aside specific times to discuss your vision to your employees and other leaders?
10. How do you ensure that your organization and its activities are aligned with your “core values”?
11. How do you help a new employee understand the culture of your organization?
12. When faced with two equally qualified candidates, how do you determine whom to hire?
13. What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should possess?
14. What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today?
15. What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others?
16. What is the one behaviour or trait that you have seen derail more leaders’ careers?
17. Can you explain the impact, if any, that social networking and Web 2.0 has made on your organization or you personally?
18. What are a few resources you would recommend to someone looking to gain insight into becoming a better leader?
19. What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
20. What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
Friday, June 26, 2009 04:19 PM
Power Points
Too big to fail?
To reduce future risk of cascading failures in the financial system, Columbia University sociologist Duncan Watts says regulators have to routinely review firms and ask: Is this company too big to fail? If so, the firm could be required to downsize or shed business lines until regulators were satisfied its failure would no longer pose a risk to the whole system. Harvard Business Review
Checklist? Check
Checklists can help to ensure you – and your staff – complete tasks to the appropriate quality and standards. Keep them small and focused. Concentrate on outcomes you seek, rather than activities to achieve them. Useful checklists won’t be perfect on the first try, but should evolve. The Practice Of Leadership blogļ”
Rudy’s take
In a crisis, says former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, “there are no perfect decisions; you have to make them and that’s it.” Knowledge@Wharton
A sign of a bad boss
If you go to an interview and the person interested in hiring you is late, be wary. If the prospective boss then arranges a phone call to discuss the job and is again delayed, be even warier. You may have encountered a boss who is perennially late – more dangerously, a sign of a bad boss who doesn’t respect your time or treat you with professionalism and respect. GeekMBA360.com
Change your focus
A low unsubscribe rate to your firm’s e-mails does not indicate you’re doing well reaching prospects: They may be simply deleting the e-mails or clicking a “report as spam” button. A high unsubscribe rate, by comparison, may be somewhat positive, indicating subscribers trust you and your unsubscribe process. Instead of focusing on the subscribe/unsubscribe rates, study how many people are opening the e-mails and the click-through rates. MarketingSherpa.com
Natural selection
To format a single word in Microsoft Word, you don’t have to go through the usual process of selecting the word before formatting. As long as the insertion point of your cursor is in the word, you can then go to your toolbar to format, or use your keyboard – CTR + B, for example, making the word bold. Allen Wyatt’s Word Tips
Friday, July 3, 2009 12:08 PM
Welcome the whistle-blowers
Encouraging employees to blow the whistle is the last thing most managers want to do, fearing it will lead to problems. But three academics who have extensively studied it say research shows it can benefit organizations by saving money and reputation, boosting employee satisfaction and preventing outrages that invite government regulation.
In the Journal of Business Ethics, Marcia Miceli of Georgetown University, Janet Near of Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and Terry Morehead Dworkin of Seattle University offer the following steps managers can take to ensure whistle-blowing occurs when necessary at their organization:
Ban retaliation
Create a tough anti-retaliation policy that permits disciplining or dismissing employees who take action against whistle-blowers.
Hire well
Search for and select employees who are likely to blow the whistle when they see something wrong. That means being on the lookout for individuals who are more critical of other people. Often, of course, those are people who organizations pass over or spurn because they can be hard to get along with or please. Whistle-blowers are also the type of people who take action to influence the environment around them.
Communicate ethics
Communicate codes of ethics and anti-retaliation policies, starting with any handbooks handed out to new employees at orientation. Michael Stores Inc. recently added an anti-retaliation policy to its corporate code of conduct, which middle and upper managers must sign every year, and offers some reassurance to whistle-blowers that they won’t suffer. Tell employees where to express concerns and what to expect.
Training and development
It’s fine to write a high-sounding code of ethics, but you need to follow that up by conducting serious training for managers and employees alike on how to handle concerns without retaliation. Cardinal Building Maintenance Inc., a commercial janitorial service, requires supervisors and managers to attend an annual, five-hour class about workplace bias and harassment, with one-fourth of the course on avoiding taking retaliation in sensitive situations.
Explain what’s wrong
Orient and train employees about what the organization considers wrongful, and what to do if wrongdoing is observed.
Create channels
Support these efforts with channels for reporting wrongdoing. Develop a culture in which dialogue and feedback are regular practices, demonstrating it’s safe to raise concerns, but go beyond that to designate an individual whom whistle-blowers can approach with concerns or a hotline.
Provide incentives
Consider financial incentives for reporting concerns, such as a percentage of savings recovered as a result of internal whistle-blowing (when embezzlement is caught, for example), a salary increase in a merit system, a one-time cash bonus, or some other financial reward. The academics stress that the only company they are aware that does this is the consulting firm BDO Seidman.
Investigate thoroughly
Instead of shooting the messenger, as some managers are inclined, investigate to determine if the complaint has merit. After a specific incident has been reported and wrongdoing remedied, consider publishing a report of actual cases, minus identifying characteristics, to illustrate the action the organization takes to rectify problems and punish wrongdoers.
Friday, June 19, 2009 03:29 PM
Where's that password?
If your IT manager took off tomorrow or got hit by a bus, would you know where to look for the administrative password used to run your company’s computer network, asks technology writer Michelle Rafter on Inc.com. One solution she cites, offered by consultant Irving Popovetsky, is to place the password in a bank vault where other authorized officials can have access to it. Don’t be like the city of San Francisco, which was locked out of its computer system when a disgruntled network administrator went to jail rather than divulge the password.
Other security tips offered:
Change the name of system administrator accounts from default names like “administrator” to something offbeat like “Fred Flintstone.”
Use strong passwords, with at least eight characters, including mixed capitalization and at least one character that is not a letter or a number.
Friday, June 19, 2009 03:30 PM
Are you a talent magnet?
Companies want their managers to be talent magnets – individuals who are so wonderful to work for that they attract high-performing employees. Justin Field, a talent management specialist at Oracle Corp., says it’s useful to know, as a manager, if you are a talent magnet and important for the company to have some sort of metric for measuring talent magnetism. On the Talented Apps blog, Talentedapps.wordpress.com he suggests calculating the rate of loss of top talent by a manager over a five-year period, a sufficiently long time frame to see a manager’s true track record.
Readers added their own thoughts on talent magnetism and how to evaluate it. One suggested any metric should include employee referrals: A talent magnet might bring people into the organization who then reach out to others they know and recruit them, perhaps after leaving the original talent magnet’s department. It sounds like a pyramid scheme, he jokes, but a very useful one for the company. Another points to the importance talent magnets play as mentors beyond their own department. And a third highlights the fact that some talent magnets can have followers accompany them as they move through several different jobs or roles.
Friday, June 19, 2009 03:29 PM
Power Points
A place for your stuff
Every day you arrive at the workspace with the same items, such as a cellphone, briefcase and/or purse, keys and mail. Make a “landing strip” where you can drop off your stuff when you come in and pick it up when you leave, says productivity writer Gina Trapani. Also, reduce the time you spend searching for workplace tools by grouping them together by tasks, the stamps with the envelopes, for example, or ink near the printer. Harvard Business School Blogs
Quick assessment
Consultant Tony Jeary recommends quarterly “more of/less of” reviews in which you ask four questions: What do you need to do more of? What do you need to do less of? What do you need to start doing? What do you need to stop doing? ChangeThis Manifestos
Get to the point
E-mail messages with subject lines 35 characters or fewer significantly outperform those with more than 35 characters in getting recipients to open them and click through to web pages. Directmag.com
Extend that service
Consumers are more likely to buy an extended service contract with a hedonistic, pleasure-related product, such as a game controller, than for utilitarian products like printers, research shows. Low-income consumers are more likely to buy the extended service package than wealthier customers because they can’t afford to replace the product if it breaks down. Journal of Consumer Research, through ScienceDaily
Four seconds to shine
The impression you make in the first four seconds is so powerful that psychologist Reidan Nadler says it take four more minutes to change it. Leadership Excellence
Quick column adjustment
When in Microsoft Excel, to quickly adjust column width to the largest item, select the columns you want to adjust (it must be more than one, even if only one really needs to be changed) and then double click on the “column separator” – the thin line between the two columns at the very top of the spreadsheet column. Lifehacker.com
Friday, June 12, 2009 11:32 AM
After layoffs, limit damage to survivors
They may be considered the lucky ones, but those who remain after the cuts are like survivors cast adrift on a life raft in stormy waters. They are probably feeling scared and helpless. And they need rescuing.
In Harvard Business Review, business professors Anthony Nyberg and Charlie Trevor suggest where managers should focus efforts:
CREATIVITY
Research suggests that downsizing dampens creativity of survivors. You need to renew your team-building efforts and provide challenging work to stimulate creativity.
COMMUNICATION
Downsizing tends to disrupt the informal social networks and information exchanges that help your company run. That loss of connection will add to the negative feelings of employees. Try to increase contact between managers and employees, institute open-door policies, actively listen to employee concerns, and seek their input in decision making.
PERCEPTIONS
Layoffs increase employees’ stress, burnout and insecurity, and decrease morale, job satisfaction and trust. You need to help employees see the downsizing process as fair and show that other options were reviewed. Consider a moratorium on future layoffs, even if you can only extend it for a limited period. “One study found that the anticipation of downsizing can have an even stronger effect than layoffs themselves on employees’ negative perception of their work environment,” the academics write.
TURNOVER
Research suggests that you can expect a substantial increase in voluntary departures after a layoff, even if the downsizing was small. Since you’re trying to save money, the extra costs of being further understaffed, seeking replacements, and training those replacements will be a burden. Try to institute HR policies that promote a sense of justice – such as confidential problem solving and effective grievance procedures – since those seem to reduce voluntary departures after cutbacks.
STARS
Pay special attention to your high performers, who are the most likely to quit if dissatisfied. Help them to see downsizing can provide new opportunities and channels for promotions.
Friday, June 12, 2009 11:32 AM
SWOT your sales
Many companies prepare a SWOT analysis – studying their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – in strategic planning. But in his Influence With Ease newsletter, Calgary-based consultant Jeff Mowatt says that it’s also one of the most effective sales tools around. Explain to your customers that you want to come up with a solution to suit their needs, and begin asking the following questions:
STRENGTHS: “When you think about other products or services in this category that you have used in the past, what have you liked about them?”
WEAKNESSES: “What have you not liked about those offerings?”
OPPORTUNITIES: “What would be the perfect solution in your mind?”
THREATS: “What has prevented you from buying that perfect offering in the past?”
The great advantage is that you aren’t talking about your own offering, Mr. Mowatt notes. And after you’ve got them to dream about the ideal product or service, you can nudge them to talk about limitations, like budget, time constraints or the fact they didn’t realize you had exactly such a solution. “The customer tells you what you need to know to help them make a buying decision that’s tailor-made for them,” he says. “When you do this with the customer, they realize that you actually get them.”
Monday, June 22, 2009 12:48 PM
How to handle a boss who over-reacts
If your boss is always in panic mode, over-reacting to the day’s events, Ottawa-based consultant Shaun Belding says that you need to use an “agree-echo-resolve” technique. In his Winning At Work newsletter, he offers an example of the boss going ballistic over you sending a fax without a cover sheet, to his mind a nightmare that can lead to the message getting lost.
Instead of trying to reassure the boss that the recipient has his or her own fax machine, try this approach: “Oh no – I can’t believe I forgot that You’re absolutely right (agree). There could be confusion (echo). Let me get a cover sheet right now and re-send it (resolve). In fact, to prevent this from happening again, I’ll put a note above the fax machine that says ‘don’t forget a cover sheet.’”
Morning Manager Contributors
Harvey Schachter
Harvey Schachter is a Battersea, Ont.-based writer specializing in management issues.