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Archive for the ‘productivity’ CategoryIdentifying The Hidden Gaps In Your ProductivityThursday, October 6th, 2011Try the following steps at your next team meeting to find those hidden gaps or stress points that create wasted hours for your team.
FREE: add this infographic to your website!600 Pixel Wide VersionLarge VersionToo Many Hats, Not Enough HeadsMonday, March 28th, 2011
In a downturn, people look to improve upon roles and responsibilities that they already have. “The economic pressures of the downturn forced companies to re-examine everything they were doing and come up with a new model,” said Harry Griendling, CEO of DoubleStar, a human resources consulting firm. No matter how you say it, the underlying idea is asking for more, but offering less. This is a good concept in and of itself. But do all of us really need to go down this road? Rumor also has it that the economy is in an upturn. Most economists predict U.S. employers will add about 2.4 million jobs this year. But the Economy is not set to fully recover until around 2014. In the meantime, how does one make sure the many hat wearing workers continue to increase the profit and productivity of their employees in today’s economy? How do those who hold jobs, keep their jobs and increase their value to add tenure in an organization? Instead of buying into the latest gadget, you go back to the basics, like your people and your bottom line. John Villere said, “Your bottom line starts with your front line.” Sounds like a good place to start to me. CMOE’s Bottom Line Leadership specifically targets front-line leaders, mid-level managers, and senior executives to help organizations build these skills and increase the energy they’ll need to accelerate performance improvement throughout the organization. Once your people in your organization know how what they contribute, effects the bottom line, you will know how to improve your contribution and in essence, wear another hat. Bottom Line Leadersip teaches businesses how to use the resources that they currently have at their disposal in a smarter way. So get back to the basics: metrics, knowledge base, performance. You will find that the practical application of the most basic processes will gain you the fastest results. Hitting Performance Targets Because They’re ThereMonday, February 28th, 2011Outside of work, people are highly motivated to stretch their mental and physical limits. They complete triathalons in record time, ride dog sleds across frozen tundra, and climb mountain peaks few have mastered. In 1950, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal became the first people to successfully climb Annapurna, an 8,000-meter peak found high in the Himalayas. The toll the mountain took on these men was brutal: each man lost a number of fingers and toes during their climb to the summit, and they were lucky to have not lost their lives. Even today, over 40% of the people who attempt to climb Annapurna die on their way to the summit. So why make the attempt? What draws people to spend their own time and money—and risk their personal safety—to reach this kind of target? The challenge. The mountain stood before them, the summit forbidding and nearly unreachable, and they wanted to see if they had it in them to make it to the top.
Acknowledge The Labor and Your Business Will GrowThursday, February 17th, 2011Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson’s Psychoanalytical Theories help explain positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. They believed that when a stimulus is introduced and a particular behavior is reinforced (such as a teacher giving praise for a right answer), we are more likely to see that behavior repeated. This is the root of the idea of Positive Reinforcement.
So what are some ways that you can acknowledge your employees? I have witnessed a number of ways in which you can recognize employees in order to motivate them and make them more coachable. Here is a list of five very quick, very simple ways to show your employees that you notice and appreciate what they do for you: 1. Simply say “thank you” There are many other ways to show appreciation to and acknowledge your employees for their hard work, efforts, and success. Just remember that by recognizing their labor, you can help your business grow and ultimately achieve the result you want and a boost to your bottom line. The Importance of Demonstrating The Value Of Your ContributionMonday, December 27th, 2010The support functions in your operations are critical to the success of business yet it is often tougher to measure their contribution than those in production or sales. Too often we look at support functions, from HR to project management, as a cost center only incidentally connected to our focus on increased profit margins and improved efficiency. We treat them as necessary functions which we justify from the neck up, but starve budgetarily because it’s hard to draw a straight line from what they do to the P&L statement. Just yesterday we received this e-mail from a frustrated senior executive: “(The president of our company) has been on an absolute rampage about expenses lately & specifically complained last week that “education” on our P&L is up considerably this year. Coaching & counseling is largely seen as a negative. I’d like to turn it somehow to a positive.”
Balance Scorecards – Only The Beginning If You Can’t Measure It You Can’t Demonstrate Your Value Added Demonstrating The Quantitative Value Of Quality 1. Close rate of those that completed a sales training module vs. those that did not. Demonstrating the outcomes of your effort is obvious when your outcomes are quantitative in nature. Failing to own and communicate the results when the outcomes are more qualitative or long term is failing to make the business case for the critical contribution of your efforts. Six Factors To Drive Motivation and ProductivityWednesday, October 27th, 2010
I get enjoyment in cycling. One phenomenon I have observed in myself is that I become more dedicated in my riding when I use an odometer. As I use this tool to track time, speed, distance, calories burned, and even my heart rate, I am inspired to push a little harder and a little longer. Why is someone willing to put so much time, so much energy, and so much effort into an accomplishment they are not being compensated for – finishing that marathon, completing the miles on the biking course, etc.? In many cases, individuals actually pay for just the opportunity to be involved in the activity – the entrance fee, the cost of the bike, and so on. There are six key factors to making someone motivated in to sacrifice. 1. The initiative must be well-defined and have a definite opportunity for all that are affected While all these steps are critical; the last step provides the most significant internal motivator for people to be push a bit harder, to make a commitment to keep going when the environment seems against them. The goal must be one put forth the necessary efforts. Oddly enough, the goal a person is willing to makes sacrifices to achieve must be one that he or she has actively participated in setting. It also must be a goal that can be monitored and attained by following a measurement tool that can arouse a sense of accomplishment and triumph. When was the last time you asked an employee what motivates him or her? When was the last time you concentrated on and made reference to the positive effects an employee has in the organization? Do you have a measurement system in place that team members can tangibly see positive effects? Here is the payoff for you, the employer. When your employees are empowered, are involved in an effective measuring system, the likelihood of your organization achieving its goals – or even exceeding them – is astounding. Not only will you see your employees committed to your success, you will see an increase in accountability and productivity all of which adds significantly to your bottom line. The focus then is on leadership that gets results and not just on managing people. What motivates you to do a marathon, or cycle, or tackle the big things in life? Add to our 6 point bullet list. NASCAR Racing Is Life! A Few Of These Tickets Will Increase Sales and ProfitabilityWednesday, October 20th, 2010In a previously posted article, Scorekeeping and Leaderboards to Drive Performance, the author discussed how measuring for performance cannot build fear and negativity into employees. Driving bottom line performance with the right measurement will engage people and get people excited and committed to push performance levels. Our experience with a retailer in Columbia, SC. proved that the right incentive can create a culture ready for the challenge. In this case a large part of the company’s business plan was to increase their sales per guest visit. The effort was a grass roots effort in which each employee picked a small, inexpensive item of the week that they would promote throughout the day. At stake for the company was a goal of 2% overall increase in sales based adding an item of the week to one out of fifteen customer visits. At stake for the employees was a pair of tickets to an upcoming NASCAR event. It’s important to point out here that, for many folks from Columbia and points south, NASCAR is life.
Each time an associate sold their item of the week they got to advance their car one length. The first ‘car’ to the checkered flag won. In addition to making the scorecard fun by picking a game board that the team related to and had an interest in, this team captured the essence of effective scorecards as motivators. To be effective, a scorecard: • Has to be about what I do • Has to “talk” to me • I Have to touch it and own it to believe it • At some point is has to make me feel successful, whether it is hitting a target, showing improvement, or reinforncing my contribution Simple, daily profit focused scorekeeping can be and should be fun. Leave a comment telling us what was the most unique or innovative score keeping method you have seen in your company or another? Or read this example of a poorly done scorecard: Scorekeeping and Leaderboards to Drive Performance Scoring Employee Performance Is Better Than The Annual Performance AppraisalWednesday, September 8th, 2010“When performance is measured, performance improves; when performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.” –Thomas S. Monson While working in the publishing industry Thomas S. Monson discovered that when workers were kept in the dark about their job performance they frequently became average performers, and for some workers less than average. But when workers were provided timely, relevant, and easy to understand information about their performance, many became superior performers.
Monson’s quote has been used for decades to explain why workers become more motivated when they are told how well they are performing. The trick in management is finding appropriate methods to not only measure, but also “report back” employee performance. Regrettably, left to their own devices, far too many managers give either vague or critical feedback on workers’ performance. And when the majority of feedback workers receive is unsupportive, untimely, unspecific, and uncalled for, the result can be poor performance at the best, or trouble performance at the worst. Formal evaluations, such as performance appraisals, often measure job positions in subjective terms, such as, “Meets Job Requirements.” In today’s business climate do you really want an employee who merely meets expectations, or do you want an employee who smashes beyond “Meets” and consistently hits homeruns? One of the reasons why annual performance appraisals can create more angst among employees than motivation is the subjective nature of the categories in which employees are measured. Workers’ performance must be thought of as scorekeeping, not as a measurement. We measure something to see what is wrong; we keep a scorecard to track what is correct. When employee performance is tracked with a scorecard that visually displays what went correct, the employee can connect his or her behavior with what is needed to win. By contrast, when employee performance is measured to find what went wrong, the employee may or may not be able to connect behavior with results. Creating a scorecard system to “report back” performance must include ten essential characteristics. 1. The employee must have psychological ownership of his or her scorecards. People believe and trust what they own, not necessarily what is imposed upon them. 2. Scorecards must be based on specific measurable results for which that employee is paid. Traditional job descriptions are constructed with generalities that don’t include specific measurable results. 3. Scorecards must be posted near the employee’s work area. Scorecards place bottom line performance at front of mind awareness, not something that is discussed infrequently, or even annually. 4. Scorecards must be updated by the employee every day, or at the least every week. Scoreboards in stadiums are updated each time the score changes; likewise, scorecards must be updated as frequently as is practical. 5. Scorecards must include an agreed upon performance line. The performance line tells the employee how he or she is doing against an agreed upon standard. 6. Scorecards must include an agreed upon goal line. The goal line tells the employee when superior performance has been achieved and celebration is deserved. 7. Scorecards must include a way for the employee to compare his or her performance against past performance. An employee must be able to see in a glance how he or she is doing now verses yesterday, last week, or last month. 8. When a scorecard shows performance below a performance line, an action plan must be connected to the scorecard. An action plan is necessary for performance below the performance line, and it is optional when performance is above the line. 9. The employee’s coach must pay attention to scorecards and give daily, or at the least weekly, feedback and coaching. Scorecards must become the reason for coaching: supportive coaching for good performance, and corrective coaching for substandard performance. 10. The employee must feel a sense of celebration when his or her scorecard performance exceeds the goal. A goal achieved is worthy of celebration by the employee, coach, and possibly the entire team. “When performance is measured [with effective individual scorecards], performance improves [because they become an incredibly strong motivational force]; when performance is reported back [through scorecards that adhere to the ten principles described above], performance accelerates. [Employees tap into discretionary performance when they believe their performance is being scored fairly and will make a difference].” Workers Only Average Three Productive Days Per Week!Monday, August 9th, 2010Of those people who work an average of 45 hours per week, approximately 17 hours of their week is considered unproductive. It’s not just one nation or geographical area, but this occurs globally. The Personal Productivity Challenge conducted by Microsoft in 2005 sampled over 38,000 people in 200 countries, in 29 languages about their productivity. The study was based on 18 statements about their working environment and has some unsettling findings. • People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive. • More than half the participants, 55 percent, said they relate their productivity directly to their software. • People spend 5.6 hours each week in meetings; 69 percent feel meetings aren’t productive. • Only 34 percent said they are using proven scheduling tools and techniques to help them gain more free time and balance in their lives. Likewise, 60 percent said they don’t have work-life balance, and being unproductive contributes to this feeling. • Women had an average productivity score of 72 percent, compared with 71 percent for men. • The most common productivity pitfalls are unclear objectives, lack of team communication and ineffective meetings — chosen by 32 percent of respondents overall — followed by unclear priorities at 31 percent and procrastination at 29 percent.
• Clarify and communicate goals of the organization in a way that is relevant to each individual. This requires commitment, results based leadership and is the responsibility of leaders, managers, and supervisors. • Links the contribution of employees to organizational goals and helps them see why they matter to the organization. • Use communication, feedback and coaching to build motivation and commitment all while helping employee see how meaningful and engaging the drive for increased profits and productivity can be. Develop your people to be more productive and performance focused.
Copyright 2010 Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness All rights reserved. 
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Rumor has it that smaller staffs, with people wearing more “hats,” is the new normal since the economic downtrend. Perhaps this is not very far from the truth. You no longer see bank foyers dotted with desks; instead they have installed “pods” that you step up to, rather than sit down to perform your financial transactions. Self-checkout lanes have become commonplace, and the days of (real life) grocery tellers asking you how your day is going as they scan your groceries and send them down the conveyer belt seem to be numbered. Doing less with more, combining two or three jobs into one, buying into the latest software or electronic gadgets to help the workplace become more efficient, or simply getting more from the fewer employees you have is where the business world is headed.
In order to see the benefits of this same level of dedication at work, leaders and managers need to help their employees find a workplace version of Annapurna. Leaders need to provide their employees with opportunities to be challenged, situations that require them to reach well beyond what is expected of them and truly excel. People love to achieve difficult goals, and they love to up the ante. Once they have reached one summit, they will be ready to move on to the next. Achieving easy goals is boring, no matter what the environment. And inside the workplace, requiring employees to reach higher levels of performance makes the work they do more rewarding, resulting in greater job satisfaction, deeper dedication to the organization, and a heftier, healthier bottom line results. So give your employees the chance to sink their teeth into bigger, better challenges. Search for that next summit, find that next challenge, reward your people for striving to reach the top. They can make it, and you’ll find the proof in your 
In a recent conversation with a colleague we discussed the ideas of the Psychoanalytical theory and whether it is relevant in today’s society, specifically with regard to the ideas of positive reinforcement. As I thought a little more deeply about this concept, I realized that these ideas are clearly applicable and prevalent in the workplace today.
Making The Business Case For The Resources You Need
My daughter is preparing to run her third marathon this fall. A person preparing for a marathon – or any race for that matter – must make the necessary efforts and sacrifices in order to cross the finish line. I have observed some of her sacrifices and am impressed by her dedication in getting up earlier, spending time pounding the pavement to her get her mileage in, and monitoring the amounts and the types of food she puts into her body for necessary fuel. She makes all of these commitments just so she can say she finished the race.
To keep score they painted a miniature oval on the floor in the back office. Each person got to choose a miniature car with the number of their favorite NASCAR driver. Once the dust settled over who was going to get #3, Dale Earnhardt’s old number, the race was on.
As Marshall Sashkin explained in his book Performance Appraisal, annual performance appraisals can actually be a disincentive or de-motivator, rather than the panacea they are often held up to be. Sashkin observed that when workers’ performance is only “reported back” annually, they often become suspicious and distrustful of the entire measurement and reporting system. In a private conversation Sashkin once observed, “A manager would be better off with no appraisal than only an annual appraisal, because from a performance perspective being in the dark might be preferable than being surprised, shocked, disappointed, or even angry.”
If you are responsible for Profit & Loss, top line growth, cost management, or higher productivity, this study should have your attention. What type of impact would it have on your organization if you could reclaim the 38% of vanishing productivity? Most organizations would be able to 
