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Issue 9 · Monday, 1 June 2009
A personal message from Joan
Welcome to the June edition of the newsletter. Summer is here at last (I’m taking a bit of a risk here, by the time you read this it could be snowing). Nevertheless I hope this is the beginning of a wonderful season of warmth for us all. A lot to say in this edition so let’s move on.
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The manager's toolkit – 176 behavioural performance descriptions
(Can I just have the fish please?)
I’m sure you’ve heard the Chinese proverb Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.
Very sensible too. But sometimes, don’t we just need to be given the fish?
What if we don’t have the time to learn how to fish, or the time to find a pond? What if we need the fish now, this minute?
I’ve been teaching managers how to define behavioural performance standards and have worked with organisations helping them to define behavioural competencies for many years.
I’ve learnt that when it comes to defining behaviours, what looks like effective behaviour in, say, ‘teamwork’ or ‘effective time management’ in one organisation, looks very much the same in another, irrespective of the size, culture, or industry.
What this means is that there are managers all over the place spending time and effort defining behaviours and coming up with very similar results to the manager sitting in the office block opposite.
In short, there’s a lot of duplicated effort. So here’s an idea.
I’ve put together a ‘toolkit’ of behavioural performance descriptions—generic descriptions of effective behaviours—including Performance Management, Change Management, Recruitment, Interpersonal, Client Management, Organisation, Teamwork and Personal Effectiveness.
In total there are 176 descriptions that managers can copy, edit, revise, correct and adapt to their business and to the people they are managing. A lot less effort for great rewards (for a reminder of why it’s important to describe behaviours take a look at my video).
And now I’d like to ask a favour.
Before I launch the toolkit I’d really like some feedback. I’d like to know if it’s accessible, useful and which behaviours I’ve either missed or not defined clearly enough.
Will you help? If you’re happy to give me feedback just drop me an email at info@ladderconsulting.com and I’ll get a copy of the toolkit to you.
You’ll also, of course, get a copy of the final version – for free. You will not get a whole raft of follow up emails trying to sell you the toolkit or anything else, not one. If you’ve any questions contact me at info@ladderconsulting.com.
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Is failing to manage your people impacting your productivity?
How often do we stand back and think about the value of applying effective people management practices – especially the value to the business? Take a look at this piece of research:
Proudfoot Consulting’s Productivity Survey for 2007 (PDF, 3.1MB) shows that in the UK 33.3% of the time spent in work is unproductive. Taking into account that they estimate that the optimum ‘labour utilisation’ time is considered to be 85% this means that UK businesses are wasting just over 18% of working hours.
Here’s what they say about the reason:
“Whatever business you’re in, pay particular attention to the calibre and capabilities of those who directly supervise frontline workers. Poor worker supervision has always been a prominent reason for wasted working time in our Business Reviews and in the last two years has risen to become the dominant factor.”
That’s just short of a day a week, then, lost to poor supervision. Not good practice in any circumstance but in the current economic climate, potentially disastrous.
Before we explore this issue further I should point out that this report is based on research of large businesses (with turnover in excess of £100m). Clearly, managing staff in a smaller business can be very different. For example, there’s less likelihood of there being a long ‘chain of command’ and it’s clearly more difficult for staff members in a small enterprise to be unproductive, at least intentionally.
However, I’d say it’s worth all businesses, whatever the size, periodically taking a critical look at how they manage their staff.
Here are a few questions you can use to assess your people management practices (based on my model of effective people management):
- Are your staff crystal clear on what’s expected of them? Have you described and agreed what good performance looks like for their job? Are these agreed descriptions written as performance standards or objectives?
- Do you monitor your staff’s actual performance against the standards or objectives on an ongoing basis? Are your staff involved in monitoring their own performance?
- Do you and your staff review together their performance on a regular basis (every three months is standard good practice)? Do you give them objective, evidence-based feedback? Do you agree on areas of outstanding performance and how these can be built upon? Do you identify and agree any areas of improvement?
- Do you discuss your staff’s job satisfaction with them so that you can, together, develop ways to maintain or enhance their satisfaction?
Do you now feel like having a lie down?
I do know this all sounds like an awful lot of work and it certainly does take some time commitment to manage your staff effectively. However, research does demonstrate again and again that not only does effective people management positively impact productivity and business performance but it also positively impacts your staff’s job satisfaction.
A win for the business, a win for your staff and not nearly as hard as it sounds with the right tools and techniques.
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Do you want to use my articles in your newsletter or website? You can but please include the following text and link to my site:
Joan Henshaw publishes her monthly Ladder newsletter for business owners and managers. If you want ideas on how to improve your practical people management practices, get your free tips now at www.ladderconsulting.com.
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