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Recently in Time Management Category
As a Yankee fan, I am excited for another season here in the Bronx. However, it saddens me to see what appears to be the dramatic decline of skills in the Captain, Derek Jeter. Some reports have blasted him for perennial hitting into a double play (one blog actually said he should change his uniform number to 63 because he always seems to hit into a 6-3 groundout).
Is it age? Is he injured? Or is it just that he happens to be in the right place at the wrong time? These are things many managers have to consider when one of their top performers suddenly declines in performance.
The key in business (and baseball) is to not rush to conclusions when someone who has consistently performed at a high level suddenly drops off. It is important to see what is going on in one's personal life, if there are new stressors at work, or if there are medical or other issues that need to be addressed.
As a fan, it's easy to jump all over Jeter (as my friends and I have in our Yankee discussions), but the important thing here is to look at the person's performance over time and see what adjustments can be made to make that person more comfortable and perform better.
I'm a stickler when it comes to attendance, and my students and former staff are well aware of how irritated I get when someone is late, wants to leave early, or doesn't show up without notice.
I think it is very important to start people on the right foot by being rigid with your attendance policy. Once employees or students feel you are lax in allowing lateness or frequent unexplained absenteeism to occur, your place of business or classroom will suffer.
Common courtesy around attendance involves informing those who you are reporting late to or not reporting to at all of your situation. I have had several people in both my academic career and professional career who have been late or absent a few times, but there is always a legitimate reason, and they always let me know ahead of time. As well, I have statistical evidence that shows that those who do not give notice of their lateness or absenteeism end up leaving school, failing courses, losing their job, or having further problems at work than the absenteeism.
What strategies have you employed in the workplace or classroom to prevent these situations from becoming problems? I'll share more, as well as reader feedback, in a future column.
On August 12th, I posted a column asking the following questions. Here is feedback from readers, as well as some ideas from me.
What activities do you involve your team in during non-peak hours? How can your team be managed more effectively to prevent productivity lapses? I'll share some best practices from readers on a future post.
"I use non-peak hours to do continual training and role plays of customer service scenarios..."
"During non-peak times, I find that these are the best times to hold informal one-on-ones with my staff."
"I find that my staff is even more productive when its slow. They realize that to fill the sales floor and to keep it neat at slow times makes it much easier to sell and merchandise all day long."
Some of things I have found work effectively include
- splitting up employee's hour long breaks into half hours to take advantage of the slow time to get breaks over with
- holding meetings with the staff on the floor.
- refocusing on the core principles of the company/day by interacting with the staff and going over the daily/weekly/monthly goals
The title of today's article is a question one of my friends like to ask people he meets for the first time (or people who he has known for a quite a long time).
What does this have to do with HR? Well, what do you carry around with you in your wallet? Are there business cards of people that you have acquired that you haven't contacted in a while? Do you have pictures of people you haven't kept in touch with in a while? What has lay dormant that you can address that is sitting within some side pocket?
Carrying pictures of dead people in your wallet can remind you of just how important it is to remember those who have come before us. It can also remind us that when we put something in our wallet, it should be something we look at often and don't leave hidden away to never be used again.
There are times you feel that you need another
voice to calm your storm and no voice is to be found, and it is during
these times that the solution is to take a deep breath and realize that
you alone can conquer any storm.
At work, we often face stressful situations that require an outside voice or colleague to assist us with our decision making. Many times, there may not be anyone around to make the difficult call that has fallen into our laps. At these times, it is almost fate that we are alone in our decision making, and it is during times like this we can find our greatest strengths amongst are loneliness.
Next time you are faced with a crisis at work, think about what you would do if there was no one else to turn to, and before you reach out to others for an opinion or support, see if you can solve the issue on your own. You will find that very often, there is no customer, employee, or vendor or any other person who you aren't able to deal with effectively.
Some of the greatest waste in organizations comes during non-peak hour employment periods. In retail, especially, certain times of the day require minimal staffing and maximum productivity.
Effective operations will do their best to monitor sales per labor hour or similar metrics to determine optimum coverage at optimum times. However, some organizations need to manage their workforce through times that may not be consistently off-peak by using them to prepare for the peak periods.
What activities do you involve your team in during non-peak hours? How can your team be managed more effectively to prevent productivity lapses? I'll share some best practices from readers on a future post.
The Seattle Mariners recently fired their manager, pitching coach, bench coach, and performance coach about 2/3 of the way through an abysmal season. The management of the organization felt that a drastic change needed to take place to recharge a team that performed below expectations.
What seemed to be so drastic about this move was how many people lost their jobs in one quick cut. In most of the prior managerial moves in the past that occurred mid-season, generally only one coach or the manager has been let go and replaced on an interim-basis by someone else within the organization.
Depending on the source, the blame for the Mariners season is on how the clubhouse character was flawed and that several key players on the team had "quit" on the manager and his support staff.
In the business world, drastic change like this may have to take place as well if performance is not up to par, but rarely does a change involving the removal of several key managers take place all at one time. However, if a change like this did occur, you can believe those working for the managers who were let go would get the message that change needed to take place.
Today I present to you the first post in a series I call "Driving and HR". One can learn a lot by looking at situations on the road and how they can translate and correlate into dealing with situations in HR and your career.
Left turn lanes have always amazed me in terms of how people don't seem to understand how to use them properly. I notice how often people make left turns either pull over to the right to make a left turn, or wait until the car coming towards them in the other direction has completely passed.
Let's look at situation 1 - cars that pull over to the right to turn to the left to prevent others from passing them on the right. Left turns can be challenging, and so can crossing over to the other side of the table when in a discussion about something new. The worst thing one can do is to block others from intervening (or in the case of driving, blocking others from passing). In order to truly reach over to the other side in the debate at work, all parties need to be involved to make the discussion clear and make all issues come out on the table.
Situation 2 - when people wait until the other car has completely passed, they delay the cars behind them and create a wait for themselves when they could easily continue moving. Similarly, in the workplace, sometimes people wait until they have left a job before pursuing a new one, or wait until an adversary leaves before making changes that need to take place. Both situations in HR create difficulty; in the former, people don't discover new opportunities that may exist at their current work location, and in the latter, people miss out on opportunities to learn from those who are going to be leaving soon.
So next time you are out driving, think about these two situations, and how you can both drive better and learn from them to give your new perspective on HR and Careers.
An age-old question I get is about how to land a job without having the prerequisite experience. This often befalls those who have experience in a field but lack management experience in that same field.
For those in college, management internships are a huge opportunity. For those beyond college, that luxury may not be afforded, but that does not mean there aren't possibilities to receive a probationary type assignment as a manager.
Often, companies will hire seasoned managers to senior hourly roles, and then offer them temporary management assignments or projects to help them fill the gaps.
For those who are seasoned hourly employees, taking on more responsibility where you work or seeking an opportunity with a company that is non-management can be the foot in the door to the proving ground you need to demonstrate what you are made of.
Next time you think about whether or not you are qualified, look at other opportunities to join an organization that will help you prove that you are worthy of the risk and the opportunity.
One of my all-time great insults was when I told someone that indeed they were a manager - they managed to do nothing.
As managers, there is a fine line between managing and leading and doing too much work that can be done by those who are supposed to be reporting to you. However, there are few greater ways to motivate your staff as to do the work that they do and do it well.
Some of the finest restaurants, retail establishments, and hotels I have visited have had the presence of a leader during busy and peak periods performing alongside their team and steering the ship from the front lines.
What kind of manager are you? Do you manage to inspire or manage to do nothing? Let's hope it's not the latter!
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