In difficult times such as these, the first reaction can be to cut overheads to the bone.

I would recommend getting more value from what you’ve got before instigating across the board cuts.

For this purpose I would define overheads as all departments who are providing central services and not dealing direct with the customer – this might be finance, HR, IT etc

Now how to get them to deliver more?

1- Often these central departments don’t see themselves as serving a customer because they are not dealing with the company’s external customers. Of course they have internal customers instead and you need to get them to recognise this.

Get the central services to present to the frontline services what services they can provide for them. Get them to sell themselves, most people in Finance, HR, IT etc have never had to sell anything in their lives so it makes them think about what it is they actually have to offer.

2 – Base your rewards and appraisals on the provision of good service and the creation of value for the business. Is it more important that your finance department provide good management information to the rest of the business or is it more important that they check every expense claim to the nearest penny? If you think it is the former then judge them on that.

3 – Give people in central services opportunities to get out with the frontline people. It will give them a better understanding of what it takes to run an operation on the ground rather than just seeing it from the back office. The more involved in the business they feel, the more they will be able to contribute.

Have you tried to change the thinking of central departments in your business? Do you think that these steps would help?

Over the last few weeks I have been meeting with each of our managers to discuss their plans for their service over the next few years. Today I spent a bit of time pulling it all together to give some structure to next year.

Photo: shoothead

Things naturally fell into three categories which I will be expecting each of them to focus on:

Financial

Obviously they need to deliver on their financial targets, whether these are revenues or costs, but this section goes beyond that. As well as the basic numbers they will need to think about how they report the information in their service to help improve performance and how they will measure value for money in their service as well.

Reporting information well really is a can-opener to find out how well their service is performing – as has been said before ‘if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it’.

If good information is available then it is easier to start on the next step of defining what is value for money, but even with good information it is still hard to really understand what are the key drivers in the business, without the information you are just guessing.

Defining value for money needs to come back to how important it is for the customer. Just because a technical manager finds it interesting doesn’t mean that the customer cares.

Culture

This is about making sure that the values of their service are aligned with the corporate values and that their behaviours, and those of their staff, are also aligned with the values.

It also covers communication, particularly internal communication. I find that lots of managers find it really hard to see internal communication as part of their role, and yet they are the first to complain that they don’t know what is going on elsewhere!

Next year we will be measuring managers on how well they embody the values of the organisation and their ability to communicate across the business as well as their technical skills. Getting consistency in this area is vital to really getting the business performing well.

Proactive approach

I think it is vital that each part of the business focusses on being as proactive as possible. By this I mean that they should try to find ways to stop things becoming problems before they are problems, it saves time in the long run.

It is a bit like taking your car in for a service, it is some cost and effort up front but it should save you money in the long run. As a business we need to be looking for those areas which could become problems but with a bit of early action could be prevented.

Summary

Three things to think about when you’re planning ahead:

- not just how to improve your finances, but have you got the right information to even begin to know how to?

- make sure that everyone is aligned to the same values and no-one works in isolation. Communication is the key.

- look forward and try to spend money to stop problems ever happening rather than putting your resources into fixing them once they have. It is better to be riding the horse than walking behind it knee-deep in manure!

Do you remember at school when you had to show your workings to get full marks? Just giving the right answer wasn’t enough you had to show how you got there.

Most people are constantly looking for quick, easy solutions to problems which require the minimum of effort. But does this miss the point? Is the journey more important than the outcome (or at least as important?)

I am all for being result-focussed and not wasting time getting to those results but it is often in the time taken to get there that you will learn more. Take dieting as an example.

If there was a miracle cure pill to eliminate obesity most people would take it straight away. These pills are constantly being developed and improved so it won’t be long until they are effective and generally available. But is this just as good as eating healthily and doing some exercise?

Let’s look at the results of the pill

1 – Weight loss

Now what about some of the possible results from diet and exercise

1 – Weight loss

2 – Better overall health

3 – Improved self-discipline

4 – Improved cooking skills

5 – New friends met at your exercise class

and potentially lots of other things.

The result is superficially the same – weight loss but the method that takes time and effort also delivers other benefits that aren’t so obvious.

The message to think about all the benefits of what you are doing when you are tempted to take a short cut, sometimes the short cut isn’t worth it in the long run.

Today I saw a guy trying to cut back a huge hedge with a small pair of shears.

I guess he’s still going at it now and not making much progress.

The moral of the story?

If you want to be effective in your activities then you need to find the right tool.

This could be the right piece of software, the right piece of equipment or the right contact, but whatever it is make sure you’ve got the right tools before you waste a load of time.

I don’t just mean that it is about keeping a lot of things in the air at once. There is another thing about juggling which I find it useful to think about when trying to be more productive.

Photo: Helico

It’s about throwing not catching

What is the most important thing if you want to be able to juggle well?

Being able to catch the balls, right?

Wrong!

Much more important in juggling is throwing. Imagine I throw two balls at you, one five yards to your right and one five yards to your left – you probably won’t catch either. But, if I throw them to exactly where your hands are then you will probably catch both of them.

If you can’t throw accurately then it doesn’t matter how good your catching is you will drop some balls.

Throw your tasks accurately for better productivity

How does this relate to productivity?

I think most people use their productivity system like a juggler but focus too much on the catching. They clear their intray and ‘catch’ any action into a number of lists depending on what system they are using (I think Getting Things Done is still the best if you stick at it). Then at some later point the task lands again and they have to throw it back up into the air.

The key thing is to concentrate more on the ‘throw’ and where the action is put, rather than just being satisfied with having cleared your intray and thrown it anywhere. The better you get at throwing the action to the right place the smoother your system will work.

Of course no-one can juggle hundreds of balls at once no matter how good your system is so you also have to reduce the number of things coming in. More ideas on that here…

Really interesting post from Leo at Zen Habits on Productivity 2.0

These are his eight headings:

1. Don’t Crank – Work With Deeper Focus.

2. Minimize Out Meetings and Planning — Just Start.

3. Paperwork is out — automate with technology.

4. Don’t multi-task — multi-project and single-task.

5. Produce less, not more.

6. Forget about organization — use technology.

7. Out with hierarchies — in with freedom.

8. Work fewer hours, not more.

These are great ideas to try to follow and I was pleased that I have already talked about a few of them in other posts:

This one is about reducing the number of tasks you have to deal with (point 1)

This one is about planning (point 2)

This one is about freedom and using technology (points 6 & 7)

Who is the most intelligent person who ever lived?

I’m sure the most common answer to this would probably by Albert Einstein. Someone did run a poll and get this answer (see here), it is interesting that all the other choices given in this are scientists (what about Shakespeare?)

Einstein was obviously a scientist and when we are describing something that is easy we often say ‘it’s not rocket science’, thereby implying that rocket science is difficult.

This seems to show that in our culture science is considered the height of intelligence and yet scientists are far from the highest paid people in the country. The highest paid people are celebrities and bankers, does anyone really think they are worth what they get paid? (Perhaps with the threat of global warming we should start to pay scientists a bit better and focus less on celebrity?)

The point of this is to make you think whether you value the right things in your staff, colleagues or friends. Perhaps it is the loud and extrovert salesperson who gets the praise for all their good work and their quiet colleague, who they rely on, is overlooked.

Make sure you reward people for showing the behaviours and results that you really want rather than those that shout loudest.

Information is power – give power to the people!

I try to keep to the principle that I should tell staff everything unless it has to been kept confidential, rather than the ‘need to know’ basis that some people use.

As an example I started a blog at our company about five months ago. Except this isn’t one of those boring CEO blogs where I tell everyone what I have been doing and how important I am and after a few months everyone is bored and it stops being posted to. This blog is completely open for staff (there are about 150) to use and communicate with:

- any member of staff can post to it (anonymously if they wish), just by sending an e-mail. Most of the posts are news of what is happening in the organisation so everyone is up to speed.

- anyone can comment, again anonymously

- we run polls on issues to find out what everyone thinks and we always go with the majority decision. If it is an issue which is already decided then we won’t run the poll, what’s the point, people have to trust the process

- There is a suggestion box which can again be posted to anonymously

- People can sign up for things or make choices through forms on the site

- Subscribing by e-mail is an option and over 40% of staff subscribe this way. There is an RSS feed but there is only one subscriber – we haven’t got the most tech savvy staff!

What this has given us is a very active company blog with over three posts a day, plenty of comments and suggestions and staff that feel involved in decision-making. It also means I don’t get hassle for simple decisions.

For example, at Christmas we always give an extra day’s holiday but each year it changes which day it is on depending on when Christmas falls. This year we ran a poll and 70% chose Jan 2, so that is what we are going with. In previous years if I had just picked this date the 30% would have complained that I had got it wrong, now they can see that it is what the majority want so they won’t complain.

When we first started plenty of people said to me that there had to be more controls and having freedom for anyone to post anything anonymously would be a problem. In fact no-one has abused the system at all and everything that has been put up has been useful news. Anonymous posting has allowed people who are nervous about commenting or posting to be able to do it without fear of getting into trouble, and I get a much more honest picture of what is going on. Anonymous posting has been really important to get things working.

I strongly recommend you think about setting up something similar but the key is to keep it as open as possible. Trust people not to abuse the system, they probably won’t.

I’m thinking about how to use wikis next but I haven’t figured our what they are best for, any ideas?

Do you ever put all your effort into producing something and then forget to actually enjoy it?

Picture: Aburt

I like to think of this like spending time baking a cake and then not getting the benefit of actually eating it. Imagine the smell of a freshly baked cake, picture the fresh cream thickly layered between two soft and moist layers of sponge. Now take this cake and throw it in the bin without eating it.

What’s the point of that! (If you’re feeling healthy you might want to think of a salad rather than a piece of cake, but cake definitely works better for me!)

In the rest of your life this might be buying some new software, a book, cd, dvd etc and then not ever actually using it. How many things have you got at home that you have never used?

Try to find at least one of these things each week and use it instead of just buying more stuff.

In business this happens when people spend so much time preparing reports on performance that they forget to actually spend time working out how to improve their performance. Always follow through and get the benefit of what you have made.

Eat your cake – you deserve it!