Let's Get Down to Business

Recovering from information overload

Always-on, multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy.

In this article posted in the McKinsey Quarterly, the authors recognize that "for all the benefits of the information technology and communications revolution, it has a well-known dark side: information overload and its close cousin, attention fragmentation. These scourges hit CEOs and their colleagues in the C-suite particularly hard because senior executives so badly need uninterrupted time to synthesize information from many different sources, reflect on its implications for the organization, apply judgment, make trade-offs, and arrive at good decisions."

The article discusses the perils of multitasking and how to regain control of your workday by creating solo time, deciding what you will and won't read in your inbox, ensuring you get down time every day, and rethinking about how you work.

The article, Recovering from information overload, is posted in our business article library. Click here to go there.

The authors are Derek Dean and Caroline Webb. Derek Dean is an alumnus of McKinsey’s San Francisco office, where he was a director; Caroline Webb is a principal in the London office.

Worn Out at Work?

In the AMA's Leader's Edge BLOG, Jon Gordon discusses "Twelve Common Workplace Behaviors That Drain Everyone's Energy" and how to counteract them. It's a good post and worth reading. The 12 behaviors are listed below. The full article is available in our business article library.

1. The Energy Vampire Attack : DON’T: Let negativity become your go-to response. There’s nothing more draining than a boss or coworker who is constantly negative. I call these folks “energy vampires.” They are never happy, rarely supportive, and constantly nay-saying any and all ideas and suggestions that aren’t their own. According to them, you might as well give up before you start.

2. The Out-of-Control Complain Train: DON’T: Give in to the temptation to whine. It’s a well-known phenomenon that can have catastrophic consequences: One person’s complaint resonates with someone else, who then proceeds to add grievances to the pile, which prompts yet another individual to throw in her two (negative) cents…and so on. Before you know it, everyone is complaining, and any work that gets done thereafter is marred by a bad attitude.

3. The Vicious Voicemail (or Email): DON’T: Leave critical or harsh messages on voicemail or send them to an email inbox. Nine times out of ten, these critiques seem much more vehement and condemnatory than they actually are. Plus, any communication you send via electronic methods can potentially last forever. Not only could your words come back to haunt you, they’ll also be a constant reminder to your coworker or employee of his or her supposed shortcomings.

4. The Loaded Monday Morning Inbox : DON’T: Overwhelm your team with a mountain of e-mails before the week is under way. If you’re finishing up your own to-do list late on a Friday night, or if you’re simply trying to get a jumpstart on the week ahead, it can be tempting to dish out the details and to-dos as you think of them. After all, if you wait ’til Monday morning, you might forget to tell those who need to know! However, coming in to an inbox of fifty-seven new messages is draining and makes folks feel like they’re fighting an uphill battle from the start.

5. The Busy Bee Bamboozle: DON’T: Confuse activity with progress. You know the person. She’s always soooo busy but doesn’t ever seem to meet deadlines or get anything done. When teams are being formed, people secretly hope she isn’t assigned to theirs. She’s living proof of the fact that just because your day is full of things to do doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re getting them done.

6. The Low Performer Look-Away: DON’T: Let subpar work slide. Simply put, low performers drag the rest of the team down. They are like a cancer inside your organization, creating resentment and generating more work for everyone else. Moreover, if you allow them to linger and thrive for too long, your best employees will move on to a more productive environment.

7. The Unclear Communiqué: DON’T: Assume others have all the information they need, or that something you know isn’t really all that important. These hastily drawn conclusions that result from chronic poor communication can lead to serious mistakes and major missed opportunities. Plus, lack of clarity is incredibly frustrating to those who must work with you. When employees, coworkers, or supervisors have to spend their time tracking you down for clarification, rather than getting the communication from you that they need, productivity falls and creativity is stifled.

8. The Disorganization Drag-Down: DON’T: Allow disorganization to impede productivity. If you’re managing or leading a company, heading up a big project, or traveling nonstop, it’s likely you’ve lost an e-mail, important paper, phone number, or pie chart or two (or three or four) in your day. You’re busy, and that’s understandable. Constant disorganization can drain your employees and coworkers if they always have to cover your tracks. It may not always be possible, and accidents do happen—but not being able to find the quarterly report for the third meeting in a row sets a bad example, and it depletes others of the energy they could be putting towards other, more productive work.

9. The Hasty Plate Clear-Off: DON’T: Sacrifice quality on the altar of expediency. There’s a lot of work to do, and you (understandably) want to get your own tasks done so you don’t hold up others. However, moving through assignments quickly in order to get them off your own plate can also mean that you’re piling the work on someone else. If you’ve rushed, you’re more likely to have made mistakes and been sloppy, which isn’t fair to the person who gets the assignment after you.

10. The Chronic Deadline Dodge: DON’T: Allow unmet deadlines to throw everything and everyone off-track. With all the unexpected obstacles you face in a workday, it’s not always easy to meet deadlines. And yes, sometimes it’s impossible—but those times should be few and far between. When people chronically miss deadlines, it’s a sure sign of a cultural issue. Either people aren’t giving it their all—or they’re truly overburdened. Either way, your company’s productivity will suffer.

11. The Unattainable Atta-Boy (or Atta-Girl!): DON’T: Get so caught up in what’s coming down the pike that you forget to acknowledge what’s happening now. Most managers and business leaders would agree that they feel a lot of pressure. It can be hard for them to constantly be the ones catching the heat from the higher-ups while the rest of the employees have only their own goals to meet and worry about. However, when responsibilities give you to-do tunnel vision and cause you to skimp on the “job well dones,” employees can get discouraged in a hurry—especially if you immediately ask about another goal that’s gone unmet or push more work at them to try and make up for losses in other areas.

12. The Blame Game : DON’T: Point fingers at others in order to take the heat off of yourself. A mistake is made, the boss is mad, a deadline is missed. If all eyes are on your team and you start pointing fingers, you could be making a huge mistake. If your employees or your coworkers don’t think you shoulder your share of the blame or are unapproachable when it comes to constructive criticism, they’ll start to shut down toward you.

See what Jon writes about the ways to combat these 12 energy draining situations. The full article is available in our business article library.

Have You Tested Your Strategy Lately?

That's the question asked by three consultants who work for McKinsey & Company, Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit in a white paper with the same title.

Their ten tests ..........

Will your strategy beat the market?
Does your strategy tap a true source of advantage?
Is your strategy granular about where to compete?
Does your strategy pout you ahead of trends?
Does your strategy rest on privileged insights?
Does your strategy embrace uncertainty?
Does your strategy balance commitment and flexibility?
Is your strategy contaminated by bias?
Is there conviction to act on your strategy?
Have you translated your strategy into an action plan?

Read Have You Tested Your Strategy Lately. It's available in our business resource library. Click here to go there. In the library you will also find a follow up article that analyzes what 2,135 global executives replied when surveyed with those questions. That article is titled "Putting Strategies To The Test".

Micromanagement—Not So Bad?

In the January 10, 2011 edition of Thinking Management, the American Management Association's management BLOG, they posted the following thoughts about micromanagement:

Micromanagement has garnered an increasingly bad reputation as a management style over the past twenty or so years. Managers are favoring a more "hands off" approach, designed to inspire employees, and give them ownership over their work. There is a fine line, however, between "hands off" and disengagement. Many managers fear the micromanagement taboo so much that employees view them as disinterested in their work...and when employees believes their work doesn?t matter the consequences can be disastrous. The solution? Situational micromanagement.

Independence can be daunting—especially for those just entering the work force or those employees who lack the experience their task requires. Much of the time, the "hands off" management approach works, because the inexperienced employee can learn from those around him or her and gain some excellent skills in the process (balancing teamwork with self-reliance, for one). Sometimes, however, their situation will not afford them this luxury, and that's when you should work with your employee on a task-to-task basis?when their performance is suffering because of inexperience.

Never jump right into micromanagement. The wrong thing to do is immediately draw a conclusion of your employee based solely on his or her experience and micromanage them from the start. If your employee's performance doesn't improve, micromanagement could be to blame.

Remember, the goal of micromanagement is to help your employee reach the point where they no longer need to be micromanaged. If you find that when you give them more freedom and their performance still suffers, you should seriously reconsider their role within the company.

What do you think? Perhaps I am just stuck on their definition of micromanagement. I do not necessarily believe that the opposite of hands off is micromanagement. I think it is probably something like "management". After all isn't that what managers do - manage? Let's not confuse micromanagement or even situational micromanagement with coaching and development - or even directing, all things that managers do and should do. To me, micromanagement is to manage, direct, or control a person, group, or system to an unnecessary level of detail or precision. The operative word in my definition is unnecessary, regardless of the motivation. To add the word situational in front of it doesn't make it any more necessary. So, I'm still fine with the old words and terms.

Read Our Management Series in Alaska Business Monthly

Our column, Business Basics, runs in Alaska Business Monthly every other month beginning in January 2011. The January article, "Your Organization's Path to Success", discusses four key elements that will help make your business successful. The next five articles (March, May, July, September and November) all build on themes introduced in the January article:

Do You Know What Your Customers are thinking?
The Most Abused Business Process
Measure Your Way to Success
Plan Your Way to Success
Should You Fire Yourself?

New FOCUS Customer Service Best Practices

Are you familiar with FOCUS? Focus provides millions of professionals with the expertise they need to make better business decisions. At the heart of Focus is a network of world class business and technology experts. These experts power the real time Q&A, world class research, and personalized support that so many businesses now depend on. Best of all, Focus is free and available to anyone who wants to make better business decisions, faster.

I am a frequent contributor to discussions on FOCUS. My comments are featured in two recent customer service best practice white papers. Check them out:

1. Best Practices for Customer Service Recovery
2. Best Practices for Delivering a Great Customer Experience

Measure What Matters

by Eric Britten

It’s 2010 and most organizations have begun to enter the 21^st Century. They understand that metrics are the cornerstone (or foundation) of a well managed operation. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), when properly developed and managed, measure both strategic and operational performance. Many managers understand the concept of cascading metrics and keep their eye on the key operating metrics day-to-day and week-to-week and key strategic metrics month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter. They monitor their KPIs regularly, using secondary and tertiary indicators (not KPIs) to help them identify where irregularities are occurring when the key indicator moves outside of acceptable parameters.

There’s an art to developing KPIs. It’s important that organizations understand how to identify or develop key performance indicators. The saying, “what gets measured gets managed”, is quite true, so organizations need to be sure their key indicators are the right ones.

Here are some pointers about KPIs:

1. KPIs are like the dashboard in your car. They provide essential information required to control the vehicle safely and efficiently. They do not provide all of the information on all of the aspects of the vehicle that could be measured.

2. A KPI is most effective when it tells a story. In other words, a good KPI should be a ratio, percentage, or a balanced combination indicating effectiveness or efficiency rather than just a raw number.

3. A KPI should be accurately defined so that others can understand what it measures, what data feed it, and how it is calculated.

4. A KPI should be capable of being influenced by the person monitoring it.

5. There should be a manageable number of KPIs at any level of the organization.

6. KPIs should have a base, a plan and a target.

7. The trend line of a KPI should also tell a story.

8. KPI targets should be S-M-A-R-T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time Related)

9. KPIs are a tool that should be used to improve performance, not to punish poor performance.

10. Organizational KPIs should be displayed on a common dashboard.

11. Managers and supervisors should be trained in the use of various tools used to analyze and improve KPI performance.

What tactics foster collaboration and cooperation?”

by Eric Britten

From a Q&A on FOCUS.

The original question had specifically to do with issues between the sales and marketing functions within an organization. But, sales and marketing are not the only two functions that suffer from a lack of understanding, teamwork and cooperation. My response is applicable to any areas in an organization where these issues exist. Here's the post and my response:

"Sales and Marketing Alignment: What tactics foster collaboration and cooperation? What do you do or have you seen done that works?"

There are two activities that have been successful for me in situations like this.
First, a strategy planning session composed primarily of sales and marketing staff (but including other stakeholders also) serves to get both groups focused on the same corporate goals. Once the common goals and vision are established, the group can then begin to discuss strategies. Often the discussion unveils the dysfunction between the groups. But, good facilitation can help the group work through their divergent perspectives and begin building a collaborative environment. Once the groups are working together, ongoing effective communications and teamwork toward executing the plan can keep the synergies in place.

A second effective activity that I have used is process improvement. Engaging either the sales or marketing group in process improvement requires that their internal stakeholders/customers be involved in the activity, so you can start with either group. Mapping out the sales and/or marketing process will lead to the identification of pain points and problems within the process, which will point to the dysfunction between the functions/departments. Employing normal process improvement procedures will get the groups engaged in working together to resolve the issues.

I have found both of these practices effective in starting a collaboration, but the key to sustainability is in not letting procedures revert to the old ways. Collaboration is everyone's responsibility, so everyone from the exec's on down need clear direction that retreat is not an option. Adding a couple of items in everyone's annual performance plan that addresses this is also helpful in motivating the groups to keep working together and working to resolve problems, issues or conflicts when they occur.

Some Q&As from FOCUS

If you're not familiar with it, FOCUS (www.focus.com) is a business social media site where owners, entrepreneurs, managers, executives and others share their experience with each other. Here are a few of the recent Q&As that I have participated in:

Adam asked: "How can you train employee empowerment? It is important for employees to feel ownership and empowerment in their jobs, but can you train those traits? If a new employee is meek, can I train them to be a confident salesperson?:

My response: Empowerment isn't something you train an employee to do. It is something their boss, organization and organizational culture allows and encourages. As others have pointed out, there are activities that can encourage and enhance it.

Elements in an organizational culture that help instill and reinforce empowerment are things such as rewarding risk taking, leadership development, openness, encouragement, rewards, recognition, teamwork, incentives, and continuous process improvement. The list goes on.

You digressed a bit from empowerment when you asked, "If a new employee is meek, can I train them to be a confident salesperson?" Confidence is one of the things that can come from empowerment, but empowerment is not what makes a good salesperson. Empowerment is a state that, if in place, allows a salesperson to be successful.

Craig asked: How can I effectively drive people to myblog?” In addition to search engine traffic, how can I effectively drive people to my blog/content in my day to day marketing activities?"

My response:

1. Be sure there is a link to your blog from your website
2. Include your blog URL as well as your website URL in your email signature.
3. Make your blog, website and electronic newsletter interactive and share content.
4. Put your blog URL on your business card and other POS material
5. Advertise your blog on the back of your business card
6. Refer to items you have posted in your blog when using social media (and give the URL for it)

Bill asked: “What are some of your strategies for retaining customer loyalty?” Customer loyalty is definitely a necessity in order to get a competitive advantage. What are some things that you do to retain customers?

My response: Your profile doesn't tell us what business you are in, so I can't target my response to your particular situation. But, I'd like to point out a few things that many folks might not consider under the heading of "building a relationship".

When you place an online order with a company you have not done business with before, how does that company build a relationship with you? Well, you're not talking with anyone, so there's no relationship building going on there. You haven't asked any questions, so it's not that they're building a relationship there. But they are building a relationship with you. How?

They build a relationship with you in a number of ways:
1. They make your online experience pleasant. By that, I mean it's a user-friendly experience.
2. They make it easy to find the information you're looking for quickly.
3. The price is probably reasonable.
4. They tell you if what you want is in stock or if it's on back order.
5. They make the checkout experience as fast and efficient as they can.
6. They probably don't gouge you with their shipping & handling costs.
7. You receive a prompt order confirmation and a thank you note for ordering.
8. You are notified when your order will ship and when you can expect it to arrive.
8. You are notified when your order actually does ship.

..... and all this without anybody talking with anyone else or even exchanging email messages. But, your experience can make you a loyal customer - or send you to another company the next time you want the same item.

Now think about these same type of attributes in a situation where the customer is physically in your place of business. All of the points are not applicable, but most of them are - and you can build customer loyalty by just running a "heads up" business. John (the previous poster) has a good point, too - know what "heads up" means to your customers.

Making Cost Cuts Stick

I have previously posted some perspectives about the ineffectiveness of many cost cutting programs. Many organizations fail to realize that, in order to be sustainable, cost reductions need to be planned and they need to be aligned with company strategy. Willy-nilly cost cuts will not last and they threaten the very core of an organization.

In a recent white paper, three McKinsey & Company associates take a hard look at what it takes to make meaningful and sustainable cost reductions. In part, they write, "Why is it so difficult to make cost cuts stick? In most cases, it’s because reduction programs don’t address the true drivers of costs or are simply too difficult to maintain over time. Sometimes, managers lack deep enough insight into their own operations to set useful cost reduction targets. In the midst of a crisis, they look for easily available benchmarks, such as what similar companies have accomplished, rather than taking the time to conduct a bottom-up examination of which costs can—and should—be cut. In other cases, individual business unit heads try to meet targets with draconian measures that are unrealistic over the long term, such as across-the-board cuts that don’t differentiate between those that add value or destroy it. In still others, managers use inaccurate or incomplete data to track costs, thus missing important opportunities and confounding efforts to ensure accountability."

The entire white paper, "Five Ways CFOs Can Make Cost Cuts Stick", is available in our resource library. Click here to go there.