Archive for May, 2013

Decision Making – Balancing The Three Forces Of Decision Implementation!

SERIES: Part Four of a Four-Part Article
With every decision comes the balancing act of the three primary factors that impact the overall decision to be made and the corresponding politics associated with the stakeholders of each factor or faction.
If the output of any given decision is increased productivity and profitability, then think of the decision-making process in your business as a triangle. Each side is labeled with one of the three corresponding factors that influence the output of any decision.
On that triangle label:
1.      Financials/Costs
2.      Time/Deadlines
3.      Quality/Expectations
In an ideal decision-making process, productivity would allow an individual to weigh all three factors equally and draw upon the best of each. The best being:
1.      The obvious elements that comprise that factor
2.      The individuals who own that factor
3.      The committees, experts, vendors, personnel assets, equipment, technology, etc. associated with a factor
4.      The ideal output from a factor to be incorporated into the final product of a decision
In reality, one of these three sides most often will be in a state of jeopardy. With this model in mind, now you can make an educated judgment as to which side is least important if you must negotiate away or down any one factor. You can now work, as a safety measure, a side that may be overlooked in an otherwise hastily executed decision.
This model aids in controlled conversations with colleagues, employees, superiors, clients and vendors to ensure all sides are considered in the discussion of an impending decision and in the execution of productivity. For example, if someone has a tight deliverable window for a decision, you might need to discuss the quality decrease that may occur or the need for additional revenue or assets to ensure that the deadline is met and no quality declines are experienced.

To increase productivity tactically, ensure that when tasked with a decision, if any of these three critical factors is outside of your sphere of experience or knowledge, you access those assets and involve them at the earliest possible time.  Don’t put off the obvious in decision making, as the longer you wait the more pressure will be placed on the three forces.

Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/30
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Decision Making – The Basic Functionality Of Decision Making With The STOP Formula©!

It is estimated that the top barriers to effective decision making in daily business run the gamut from procrastination and paralysis-of-analysis to fear and avoidance. Study any entrepreneur or perceived successful individual and what you will not observe is the presence of these barriers!
To increase your daily productivity, consider the basic functionality of how one’s brain processes data and how one can template that action for decision-making success.
In order to facilitate the basic process of decision making, your brain must:
1.      See the STIMULANT to be addressed.
2.      RATIONALIZE that stimulant as being worthy of one’s time.
3.      Establish realistic courses of RECOURSE in dispensing with that stimulant.
4.      COMMIT to that recourse which will then be made or implemented.
To facilitate the decision process in pursuit of increased productivity and, thus, profitability to an organization or business, one needs a decision-making formula that parallels the brain flow from a business perspective and ensures avoidance to the barriers to effective decision making. Consider the “STOP Formula©”:
1.      S:  Stop and See the stimulant at hand. If you can isolate and see the stimulant needing attention, you will avoid procrastination.  This means you are on your way toward increased productivity by avoiding the first barrier to success!
2.      T:  Target and Think through why that stimulant has been raised to your attention. While you make a case for or against the stimulant, you are working through the rationalization phase.  By moving smoothly forward and recognizing that there is another step, you will avoid paralysis-of-analysis, the second barrier to success!
3.      O:  Organizing Options for forward movement is the concentration of this third step in the decision process. Explore multiple viable recourse or option plans, recognizing that the word “options” in this step is plural.  Until there are plural forward pathways, one should not hastily move forward. By doing this, you can address fear-based reasons for not moving forward confidently and become more confident to move to the fourth, and final, step in the decision process for increased productivity.
4.      P:  Pick and Proceed with the option that is most viable. By committing to that action plan, you will also always have a backup plan.  If, in fact, you did step three effectively and not hastily, you will avoid the barrier of not moving forward.
The parallel applications of this formula are explosive. You can also use it in pursuit of presentations and decision making with others to facilitate a controlled, systematic dialogue, by presenting one item or step at a time.  You will progress smoothly and increase group productivity. This can also be used in crises, decision-making situations in business to ensure tactical control and emotional containment, by addressing each of the four functional decision steps at a time.
Increased productivity comes from the basic functionality of the decision-making process gained by using the STOP Formula© daily!

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/27
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Decision Making – Mission Statements Serve As Road Maps To Greater Productivity And Decreased Conflicts!

Every day good people in good businesses come into work and invest significant energies working against one another. Finally, someone stops and asks, “Why are the individual decisions made by people actually holding us back from significant productivity and profitability opportunities?”

This may not be as rare as one might think. Finding the answer to how to get more people to work from the same perspective is easier than one might expect. This is because each person has differing understandings of what decisions need to be made – there is no common map off which to benchmark independent decisions.

To address this, there are Five Distinct Mission Statements that every business needs to consider, define and post. Once these mission statements are posted, individuals will have a common map to guide their decisions and actions and increase productivity.

A Mission Statement is like a well-defined MAP. With it, each decision and action lets you know if you are on course, off course, ahead of schedule or behind it. With a well-defined map (mission statement), productivity explodes!

I liken a mission statement to that of a map. A commonality among adults needing to drive, for example, from where they are to an unknown destination, is to generate a map to guide their individual decisions. This should be the same drill followed daily in business!

There are Five Mission Statements of which one should be aware in order to make better decisions and tactically increase daily productivity.

  1. Mission Statement One, Organizational – The senior stakeholders should define the purpose of the business in this first and overlying statement referred to as the Organizational Mission Statement. This will give all subsequent leaders and functional areas a guidepost for crafting their contributing components.
  2. Mission Statement Two, Functional Work Area (department, line, shift, unit, team, etc.) – Each member of a work area should participate in crafting his or her purpose and, thus, contributing piece to the overall Organizational Mission Statement in their own Functional Work Area statement. After everyone has participated in crafting this mission statement, each person can now reference any decision or action against this statement to determine independently whether it should be pursued or dropped in pursuit of greater productivity!
  3. Mission Statement Three, Customer – The customer can be a moving target, as who you are engaging at any time may differ. Knowing what their needs, purposes and desires are is their Customer Mission Statement.  This will aid you in determining whether you can accommodate them.
  4. Mission Statement Four, Colleague – Likewise, knowing why your colleagues are associated with your team is the window through which you can see what their motivators and de-motivators are. Knowing this assists you in recognizing what items you may want to raise in their presence in order to influence the overall productivity of the team!
  5. Mission Statement Five, You – With the gained insight from knowing the first four mission statements, an individual can craft a personal mission statement that will serve to guide his or her own decisions for increased productivity!

With well-defined Mission Statements, good people in good businesses come into work every day and invest significant energies, working in concert with one another. Tactical decision-making is impossible without clear maps from which one is expected to work.  And with clear maps, productivity explodes!

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/22
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Decision Making – Using The Quadrant Manager System© Ensures Greater Productivity Versus Activity!

When the dust settles and the calm returns, the degree of quality productivity versus sheer activity will mean the difference between profitability and mere sustainability in today’s business place. To attain this, one must be able to facilitate basic decision-making in relation to what one focuses energy on and what should be set aside or ignored entirely.

In today’s business place, whether a professional uses an electronic self-management device (PDA) or a more traditional day planner, it is critical that the use of a tactical system be adopted and used diligently for true productivity.

An incredibly simple, yet explosive, tactical productivity decision-making instrument that can be adopted into any system is the “Quadrant Manager System© (QM)!”

To ensure maximum productivity, use the following instrument daily. It can be added to any existing system to ensure the totality of listed action items needing daily attention get the appropriate level of attention. The instrument also serves as an efficient daily monitoring instrument at mid-day by evaluating what items in one’s business have been addressed by mid-day and thus where energies should be focused for the remainder of the day.

Always remember, there is a difference between being active and being productive!

To use the QM System© there are three distinct tactical steps. Both psychology and profitability are incorporated into the implementation of the QM System©. If you shortcut any step, you will find that you will lapse into an ACTIVITY zone and not a PRODUCTIVITY zone!

  1. STEP ONE, CREATE IT – Anywhere on your existing physical day planning device or on any blank sheet of paper, merely draw a large plus sign. Make the sign large enough to make small notes within the four quadrants imposed by the intersecting lines, yet small enough to not take up much physical space.
    The plus sign created by the intersecting lines creates four distinct quadrants (hence the QM System©), each representing a productivity zone. In any order, it does not matter, label the four quadrants: TO DO, TO SEE, TO CALL, TO WRITE.
    These represent the only workable action items one faces in business. All tasks, assignments, and activities can be attributed to any one of these four quadrants!
  2. STEP TWO, BUILD IT – Regardless of the totality of items you may have assigned to a pre-existing action/to do list, to increase productivity greatly, you must evaluate each category within the QM System©.  Only write up to, and never more than, THREE ENTRIES in each quadrant. If there are not three items needing attention for a given day in a given quadrant, don’t make up extra work for yourself.  If there are more than three, the rule of thumb is, “If I could only work on up to, and no more than, three items per quadrant, which three would be most important?”
    Now you have identified the three most important action items for productivity for a given day.  If accomplished, you will have completed the top 12 most productive items needing your attention, as opposed to countless items that, while they may have needed attention, were not critical and, thus, not important.  When the dust settled they were probably more along the lines of items that occupied a lot of activity and not productivity!
  3. STEP THREE, PRIORITIZE IT – Now evaluate each quadrant independently. Using the same methodology used for placing the initial entries into the quadrants, evaluate and prioritize each quadrant’s action items by asking, “If I could only work on one item in this quadrant, which one would be most important?”

Continue that evaluation for all entries in each quadrant and for all four quadrants.

When you are done, you will have a maximum of three items per quadrant, and each will have a descending numerical value associated with it. Notice that you may have items in a quadrant that, while you wrote them down as the first entry in that quadrant, have a value of two or three associated with them.  This indicates that they get your attention only after the “one’s” have been completed or pushed forward as far as they can for legitimate reasons.

To ensure maximum productivity, always work tactically on those items that are genuinely most important. You can take the QM System© and occasionally modify your attention by drawing a circle in the middle of the instrument. Then prioritize the quadrants, one more important than the other, as well as the items within each quadrant.

Additional lessons learned from the implementation of the system are: All items that fall at level three or below are those that should either be delegated away to others or should never have been allowed onto your figurative desk; you can use the instrument as a conversation reference with those that over-task you by engaging in cooperatively deciding which items need your true attention and which items can be better tasked away to others; you can modify the system and have tactical variations for just marketing, selling, research-development, business projects, and so on.

Success in the new economy is dependent upon every player at every level setting aside those items that may be fun but are not productivity items for one’s bottom line purpose!

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/21
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Twelve Power Steps to Developing Tactical Legendary Leader Status!

Executive Summary:  Summarization of Tactical Leadership Traits

As a leader, one is measured both on how one strategically approaches responsibilities and how one tactically fulfills each action undertaken. As a leader, the tactics one deploys have a direct affect on the net outcome of any performance, personally or from the team one leads.

In the business world today, the performance of every person in every position must be finely tuned to such a level that everything within a leader’s sphere of influence can be addressed with precision. This will free up one’s mental and physical energies when unexpected circumstances occur.

In studying peak leadership performers today, one will notice there are a minimum of twelve tactical leadership skills that every leader will engage in and every aspiring leader must understand, practice, enhance and deploy:

  1. Decision Making
  2. Meeting Management Effectiveness
  3. Change Management and Facilitation
  4. Attitude Effectiveness and Influence
  5. Communication Effectiveness
  6. Personnel Assessment
  7. Diffusing Defensiveness
  8. Leader as Counselor
  9. Tactical Daily Administration Efficiencies
  10. Conditioning Others for Success
  11. Motivation and Motivating Skills
  12. Deploying Exportable Skills

As a leader, there is a myriad of ways to tactically deliver and execute each of these twelve core leadership Actions, Behaviors or Characteristics. Consider this an essential ABC Plan for effective tactical business leaders in the new marketplace. The ABC Plan represents the following: 

  1. A – Actions required by a leader to tactically execute the functionality of any position or task. Also, the actions required of a position or task that an individual will be expected to deploy to be successful.
  2. B – Behaviors required to be possessed by an individual. Also, subsequent competencies or actions needed to fulfill expectations of a position.
  3. C – Characteristics of a peak performer in a position or executing a task.

As you asses your own effective leadership ABC’s, in which of these twelve tactical ABC’s do you feel competent, and which ones may serve as guideposts for improvement? Consider the same assessment as you evaluate your talent pool from which you grow tomorrow’s leaders today.

This concludes ideas on tactical leadership effectiveness.   For the entire tactical tools, order the forthcoming hardback, Building a Tactical Leader.

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/16
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The “Exportable Performance Player” Validates Effective Tactical Leadership!

Should you invest in developing the skill set of your human capital and have it potentially leave you, or not provide it with continual skill development and have it remain?

As a tactical leader, the answer is simple. Continually developing “Exportable Performance Players” for your organization is the ingredient that spells success and profitability. No matter which business one is in today, the continual need to refine and fine-tune individuals’ core competency skill sets is a minimal must to be relevant tomorrow.

Recognize the value of an individual to your business as an asset, much like leading- edge technology, equipment, facilities and market share. People are today’s most valuable asset.

Every player within your organizational diagram (whether identified from a global perspective or within individual strategic business units, lines, divisions, departments, areas, etc.) must be seen as an asset.  They should be viewed as having unique skill sets that may have specific application to what they do, and these skill sets must also be observed for exportable application.

A tactical leader continually asks whether he or she has created an atmosphere that is conducive for individuals to welcome, embrace and seek out ongoing skill development (technical, non-technical, degreed or non-degreed, certification or non-certification) that would then be exportable with them should they need to make a career transition. Consider:

  1. Can an individual with his or her present skill set make a horizontal move within your organization and bring immediate value to their new team?
  2. Can an individual make a vertical move within your organization and shepherd others to greatness with his or her always relevant skill set?

How exportable are you and those that you lead based upon unique skill sets, experience and performance platforms?

As a tactical leader, you may need to work with other stakeholders within your organization to create an atmosphere in which everyone becomes fanatical about on-going and continuous skill set development. Consider whether your organization has developed peak performers with exportable skills:

  1. Has the executive team willingly embraces skill development initiatives and has defined career development pathways for everyone?
  2. Has the rhetoric of all influencers (management, unions, senior employees and new hires) moved from excuses and nay-saying to outright endorsement and instances whereby everyone welcomes and actively participates in on-going training?
  3. Has the union leadership enthusiastically embraced any training opportunity to make any member/employee more valuable (and thus, exportable) to his or her functionality?
  4. Is the overall attitude of employees to welcome and hold one another accountable to the use of new skills for continually increased efficiencies in everything that is undertaken within an organization?

A few years ago, a study by the American Society for Training and Development revealed that the amount of time organizations inAmericainvested into training initiatives for their human capital was less than two percent of the annual employee work time each year. A true test for today’s tactical leader is to correctly and continually provide the sequential skill improvement and enhancement necessary for each individual to do two critical things:

  1. Become the very best they can be (present tense and future) at the task for which an organization has employed them.
  2. Attain their personal goals, whether within your organization or onward toward another place in life.

Knowing whether or not employees have truly relevant exportable skills can be answered by this question: “If an employee on your present team were to leave you and go to another business unit within your organization or to a new employer, and you were that person now to consider hiring them, would that employee bring with them truly cutting edge skills that could be immediately drawn upon to elevate the level of performance of the new environment?”

A player performing at peak levels of effectiveness is a sign that a great leader has invested daily, tactically and wisely into an individual. A player that can take those skills and move onward, upward or outward and continue his or her reign of success is an even greater testament of great leadership.

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/14
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Motivating Performance with Primetime Activities!

High action and high production are two universes apart. Highly successful people are productive!

To maintain high levels of energy and ensure performance motivation, consider which time of the day/night you work on which activities. Consider the following three questions to determine what your “Prime Time” is and which activities should be addressed during this powerful energy window for increased or sustained motivation:

  1. Are you an a.m. or p.m. person (during which  time of the professional day do you tend to have your highest mental and physical energies?)?
  1. Define that window of a.m. or p.m. in terms of which precise hours of the day it starts and ends.
  1. To determine the true “Prime Time” within this window, recognize the limited hours within it during which you have the fewest distractions and interruptions.

This is your “Prime Time”.  It is within this time frame that you should always schedule the action items that generate the greatest net yield to your purpose for being. To better determine which items should be on your schedule, reflect upon your organizational, departmental and personal mission statements.

For example, if you were an a.m. person, and that could be defined as 7 a.m.through noon, your “Prime Time” would be from7 a.m. to about9:30 a.m. So, it is within this window that you would want to schedule those things that require the greatest degree of mental and physical alertness. It would be detrimental to your productivity schedule to be cleaning coffee pots, rearranging paperwork on your desk or participating in other low impact activities during this time!

By assigning appropriate items to your “Prime Time” sequence, you will find that your output skyrockets. By replicating this same business model with those around you, their productivity will skyrocket as well! Recognize that when you experience greater victories of meaningful accomplishment, your self-esteem rises, and that influences your inner motivation and passion. As a leader, how you tactically approach your work and appropriately assign endeavors to your daily energy flow will directly influence the output for success.

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/09
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Motivating the Poor and Low Performer!

Executive Summary:  How a leader can tactically engage the poor or low performer to refocus their energies for increased organizational contribution

“Where do poor performers and low performers exist, and how can a leader tactically engage them to refocus their energies and become contributors to the organization once again?”

As noted in the classic strategic business book, GOOD TO GREAT (©2002) by Jim Collins, a large portion of business success in the new world economy is who is on your team. In essence, it is “Getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and then getting the people on the bus in the right position.” It may be time to find a dignified way to remove the poor or low performer from your team immediately!

In motivating the poor and low performer, consider the following tactical ideas as a leader of influence:

  1. Relentless Pursuit of Positive – Continually maintain a positive point of reference when engaging this player and only accept positive, forward-moving solutions to any situation, problem or obstacle they raise.
  1. Set Them up for Success – Recognize this player’s core skill set and set them up with a daily task that plays to their strength. Most individuals experience accomplishment when they do things they are good. Accomplishments trigger a person’s mind victory. This feeds higher self- esteem, greater enthusiasm, higher levels of passion and greater motivation!
  1. Surround Sound System – Ensure that the environmental noises, team associations, individual interactions and assigned tasks continually reflect only positive images and experiences in the work domain.
  1. Drown Out the Old – Realize that one of the things that feeds low and poor performers is one’s ability to replay passive-aggressive whiner comments like, “We can’t do that here,” or, “You can’t do that,” or, “That will never work.” Whenever anyone engages in negative diatribe, politely insist on a viable option with detailed explanations.
  1. Celebrate Accomplishments – Even the smallest accomplishment should be celebrated. Many times, what has fed the low and poor performer’s mindset is a belief that they are not appreciated, respected or valued inside the team. Everyone needs a little encouragement. By celebrating small and large accomplishments of an individual or team, this excites and energizes everyone!
  1. Demand Alternatives – Every time individuals say something won’t work or is a bad idea, don’t defend yourself or challenge them. Instead, demand that they offer a viable alternative. Politely engage them from a firm perspective that conveys the message of put up or shut up!

You might use a sentence such as, “If this idea won’t work, what do feel would be some alternative options?”

  1. Reposition Task-Player Connection – You may have a great personnel asset in the low or poor performer, it is just that the person in question has evolved into a position for which they are not prepared, trained, skilled or competent. Either provide the player with the necessary skill development to succeed, evaluate a better position for them on the team or reassign the task that is feeding their negative disposition to a more qualified player on your team.

As a leader, engaging the low and poor performer with some of these tactical engagement approaches can recondition them to be more proactive. As noted in YIELD MANAGEMENT (©1999 by Jeff Magee), there are a host of tactical approaches one can deploy to get “good people on your bus, potential low performers back in alignment and bad people off the bus.” In many cases, individuals morph into low and poor performance standards as a result of early improper engagement by managerial-leaders. Studies reveal that individuals need three primary organizational guideposts to thrive:

  1. Structure
  2. Nurture
  3. Discipline

Recognize that when managers or leaders begin evading or eliminating these three guideposts, the endpoint typically is destructive. By following this three-step template, you can craft appropriate behaviors for success and work to convert a low and poor performer back into a constructive positive performer.

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/07
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Motivating Teams & Getting Across the Bridge to “Why”!

Executive Summary:  Ideas for implementing new initiatives for successful team buy-in and commitment

As a leader, your ability to tactically engage your team in a non-combative manner and get the individuals within a team to embrace new ideas, initiatives, policies, procedures, projects and ways of being successful is paramount to success and survivability. Most teams resist what must be done to sustain success and thrive in today’s marketplace because management has a habit of not communicating the “why” factor. Conversations typically sound like this:

“While this is WHAT we have been doing and HOW we have been doing it, starting today, here is WHAT we must do and HOW it must be done.”

As soon as management completes this sentence, sends this email or posts this memo, the recipients immediately internally process and say to themselves or out loud to others:

“WHY can’t I do it the way I have always done it?” or, “I  don’t understand WHY I have to do that.”

At this point, an organization and, more specifically, that team will experience the following:

  1. Passive aggressive behavior from individuals
  2. Resistance and anger from individuals
  3. Undermining actions, comments and behaviors to implode desired outcomes
  4. Shifting of work loads and over burdening some individuals while others skate by doing minimal work
  5. Cliché warfare
  6. Stubbornness

It is not that individuals, managers or leaders are good or bad people, but rather they have fallen into systemic ways of engaging others. While managers and leaders have spent exhaustive hours rationalizing the reasons to take a particular action, they have failed to allow this same informative or investigative process to occur on the part of the team.

Consider:

  1. Make sure that when discussing any new way of doing something or the need to change something, you spend as much time on the WHY aspects of the dialogue as you would on the WHAT and HOW components.
  2. The WHY component is where the rationalization takes place. If one can’t easily rationalize a need for the new WHAT and HOW components, it is natural to resist.
  3. Identify the various parties that make up the team and determine the vested interest level of each individual to glean a better perspective of how to construct your WHY presentation.

As a leader with your team, if you feel that you are on one side of the river bank, fighting and pulling people to come across and meet you, you have not constructed the “Bridge To Why”. That is why the team is resisting you and defending the way they are comfortable with doing whatever they do.

-Dr Jeff Magee
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2013
05/02
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